LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©Imp, ©qajng^i 3f a, 

Shelf M\/A<^b 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



Christ And 

His Friends. 



A Series of 31 Revival Sermons Preached from 
Texts in St. John's Gospel. By Louis 
Albert Banks, D.D. (Pastor Hanson Place 
M. E. Church, Brooklyn, N. Y ), Before 
Large and Appreciative Audiences, and 
Resulting in Hundreds of Conversions, 
During January, 1895. 12mo, Cloth, 382 
pp., gilt top, uncut edges. Price, $1.50, 
Post-free. 

Bishop Randolph F. Foster, says : "It will be of 
interest and profit to any minister or earnest Christian 
layman who may be led to the reading of it." 

Charles L. Goodell, D.D., Pastor First M. E. 
Church, Boston, Mass.: "It is tilled with a wealth of 
illustrations, fresh from actual experience. ... If any 
preacher aspires to being a soul-winner, let him study 
these sermons. 11 

Marcus D. Buell, D.D , Dean of the Boston Uni- 
versity School of Theology, says: 'For directness, 
simplicity, pathos, great variety and force of illustra- 
tion, and spiritual power they are truly remarkable. 11 

Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D., LL.D., Washing- 
ton: "I am delighted to find the fresh and original 
style in which the author portrays the great awaken- 
ing truths of the Gospel. 11 

Bishop Willard F. Mallalieu, D.D., LL.D., Buf- 
falo, says: "These sermons are fresh, vivacious, breezy, 
spiritual, and very practical. . . . They abound in 
hints, suggestions, and illustrations that will be help- 
ful to preachers in revival work. 11 v 



FUNK&, WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, 

30 Lafayette Place, New York. 



THE 

SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER 

a juries of temperance Ee&tfcal Bfscourgeg 



BY 

REV. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF "THE PEOPLE'S CHRIST," " WHITE SLAVES," " THE REVIVAL 
QUIVER," "COMMON FOLKS' RELIGION," " THE HONEY- 
COMBS OF LIFE," " HEAVENLY TRADE-WINDS," 
"CHRIST AND HIS FRIENDS," ETC. 



WITH INTRODUCTION BY 

THE REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER, D.D. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 



NEW YORK 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

LONDON AND TORONTO 
1895 




K- 






Copyright, 1895, 
By Funk & Wagnalls Company. 



TYPOGRAPHY BY C J. PETERS & SON, 
BOSTON. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction 7 

Item Number One. 

The Saloon Debtor to Disease II 

Item Number Two. 

The Saloon Debtor to Private and Social Immorality, 32 

Item Number Three. 

The Saloon Debtor to Ruined Homes 49 

Item Number Four. 

The Saloon Debtor to Pauperized Labor .... 66 

Item Number Five. 

The Saloon Debtor to Lawlessness and Crime . 81 

Item Number Six. 

The Saloon Debtor to Political Corruption .... 94 

How to Settle the Saloon Account 112 



INTRODUCTION. 

BY REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER, D.D. 

My eloquent friend and neighbor, Dr. Louis 
Albert Banks, has been doing what every pastor 
may wisely imitate. He has been giving his 
own people, and the large numbers outside of 
his own membership who resort to the Hanson 
Place M. E. Church, a series of most instructive 
discourses on the vital question of Temperance. 

For a whole week the spacious church edifice 
was thronged on every evening ; and several 
neighboring ministers were called in to pre- 
side at these large assemblages, and to offer 
their own brief contribution of practical truth. 

The crying need of the hour is afresh educa- 
tion of the public mind and conscience in regard 
to the curse of strong drink. The reason why 
laws prohibiting the sale of intoxicants are not 
passed — or if passed are left in some places to 
become a dead letter — is that the majority of 
the people in such places believe in buying and 
in drinking intoxicants. The public sentiment 

7 



S INTRODUCTION. 

in those localities has no backbone of Total 
Abstinence in it. 

There must be a new education of the Ameri- 
can people in regard to the drink-evil. It must 
be carried on in the homes, in the Sunday- 
school, in the public schools, and from the pul- 
pits. General Neal Dow wrought for many- 
years in such an educational campaign before 
Maine enacted her first prohibitory law. 

Social drinking customs are sadly on the in- 
crease. The decanters are stealing back into 
families from whom we expect better things. 
Too many pulpits are either silent, or speak 
" with bated breath.'' The church of Jesus 
Christ must come up to its full measure of duty 
if the drinking customs are to be changed and 
the drink traffic to be suppressed. 

Temperance ballots are not self-made ; they 
are the result of education and the toning-up 
of the public conscience. 

Dr, Banks has set a splendid example ; and 
this volume, containing his recent lectures, is 
most heartily recommended, and deserves a 
broadcast circulation. 

Brooklyn, May n, 1895. 



TO MY FRIENDS 

Cfjarles C anti jfrances 8. Be&eriUge 

The Sweet Singers of the Prohibition 
Evangel, 

whose charming songs did so much to make the 
discourses recorded herein effec- 
tive when delivered, 

is affectionately dedicated by 
The Author. 



THE 

SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 



ITEM NUMBER ONE. 

THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 

Our theme in this series of evening confer- 
ences is to be " The Saloon-keeper's Ledger." 
You all understand what a ledger is. It is a 
book of results. Its balance sheets are the accu- 
mulated harvest of day-book and journal. The 
people of Brooklyn have had business with the 
saloon for a good many years. The day-books 
of every-day occurrences have passed into the 
journal of the years, and these have crystallized 
into a ledger of public knowledge. The liquor 
saloon, like any other business, must stand or 
fall by its ledger. 

We come this evening to discuss the first 
item in the account. It is my purpose to de- 



12 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

liberately charge and to prove that the saloon 
as an institution is the source of a large part 
of the disease in the community. Not only so, 
but I stand ready to show by the best scientific 
and medical authority on earth that the claim 
made by the organs of the liquor traffic, that 
intoxicating drinks are to be numbered among 
the necessities of life as food materials, is a 
delusion and a fraud. 

Every kind of intoxicant sold by the liquor 
saloons and sought after by the debauched 
appetite is drunk for the sake of the alcohol it 
contains. Leave alcohol out of lager beer, 
and a man would as soon suck a faucet from an 
offal wagon as touch the nasty stuff. It is for 
the alcohol that is in it that the drinker is will- 
ing to swallow the slop. I have heard of a boy 
who was smoking his first cigar, and, becoming 
very pale and sick in countenance, said to his 
playmate as he threw it away, " There's some- 
thing in that cigar that makes me sick." "I 
know what it is," said the other boy ; " it's ter- 
backer." Alcohol is at once the basis and the 
devil of all intoxicating drink. Dr. Willard 
Parker, voicing the sentiment of medical science, 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 1 3 

pronounces alcohol "an irritant poison, having 
no place in a healthy system." Horace Greeley, 
in an earnest temperance editorial in the Tribune 
many years ago, urged young men to avoid the 
tempter in whatever form he might appear, 
" whether as punch or bitters, as sherry or 
madeira, as hock or claret, as heidsieck or 
champagne." Other members of the editorial 
corps who were not total abstainers greeted Mr. 
Greeley on his entrance to the office that morn- 
ing with uproarious laughter, telling him that 
heidsieck was not a different wine from cham- 
pagne, but only a particular brand. As the 
laugh went around the room, Mr. Greeley said, 
"Well, boys, I guess I'm the only man in this 
office that could have made that mistake. It 
don't matter what you call him — champagne, 
or heidsieck, or absinthe — he is the same old 
devil." There is no fact more absolutely estab- 
lished by science or history than that all alco- 
holic beverages have in them the " same old 
devil" — the sleepless enemy of health. 

There is no greater delusion than the notion 
that the popular saloon drinks are aids to physi- 
cal development, and of food value. Dr. A. E. 



14 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

T. Longhurst, in the Westminster Review, says : 
" The stimulating action which alcohol appears 
to exert on the physical functions is only a 
paralytic action. Again, there is a strong be- 
lief that alcohol gives new strength and energy 
after fatigue has set in : the sensation of fatigue 
is one. of the safety-valves of our machine. To 
stifle the feeling of fatigue in order to be able 
to work on, is like forcibly closing the safety- 
valve, so that the boiler may be over-heated, 
and explosion result. The belief that alcohol 
gives strength to the weary is particularly dan- 
gerous to the class of people whose income is 
already insufficient to procure subsistence, and 
who are misled by this prejudice into spending 
a large part of their earnings on alcoholic drinks, 
instead of purchasing good and palatable food, 
which alone can give them strength for their 
hard work. It is commonly thought that alco- 
holic drinks aid digestion ; but in reality the 
contrary would appear to be the case, for it has 
been proved that a meal without alcohol is more 
quickly followed by hunger than when it is 
taken." A great German chemist, after many 
years of thorough experiment, says : " I have 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 1 5 

proved with mathematical accuracy that the 
amount of nourishment you may take up on the 
point of a table-knife inserted into a sack of 
flour contains absolutely more nourishment for 
the physical organism than the nourishment 
contained in eight quarts of the best Bavarian 
beer ; and if a person is able to drink two gallons 
of beer each day in the year, he would get about 
the same amount of nutrition from the beer in 
twelve months that he would by consuming a 
five-pound loaf of bread, or three pounds of lean 
meat." 

If you have a mathematical head you can 
easily compute, according to this chemist — 
who is also a German — that in attempting to 
get food out of beer a man has to strain one 
hundred and twenty gallons of swill through 
his disgusted stomach in order to catch a loaf 
of bread. 

Not only is the beer which is in common use 
in Brooklyn of no value for food, but it is a 
great and prolific source of disease. The To- 
ledo Blade some years ago. made one of the 
most searching investigations into the beer 
question ever made in this country or any 



1 6 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

other. It presented the opinions of the lead- 
ing physicians of the whole world in regard to 
the effect of beer on the physical health. 
Without exception, these medical men con- 
demned its use, and declared that it was espe- 
cially fruitful in producing diseases of the liver 
and kidneys, and in all cases lowered the vital 
forces to such a point that disease had little to 
do to sweep its beer-drinking victims out of the 
world. One physician said that in his own 
practice and observation forty-nine out of fifty 
cases of Bright's disease of the kidneys were 
cases of beer-drinkers. The evidence that was 
gathered at that time was summed up in this 
editorial utterance : " The indictment they of 
one accord present against beer-drinking is sim- 
ply terrible. It is a curse for which there is no 
mitigation. The fearful devil-fish, crushing a 
fisherman in its long, winding arms, and sucking 
his life-blood from his mangled body and limbs, 
is not so frightful an assailant as this deadly 
but insidious enemy, which fastens itself upon 
its victim, and daily becomes more and more 
the wretched man's master, clogging up his 
liver, rotting his kidneys, decaying his heart 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. \J 

and arteries, stupefying and starving his brain, 
choking his lungs and bronchia, loading his 
body down with dropsical fluids and unwhole- 
some fat, fastening upon him rheumatism, 
erysipelas, and all manner of painful and dis- 
gusting diseases, and finally dragging him down 
to the grave at a time when other men are in 
their prime of mental and bodily vigor. Every 
one of them bears testimony to the fact that no 
man can drink beer safely; that it is an injury 
to any one who uses it in any quantity." 

I press this question of beer home upon your 
attention, because I am satisfied that there is 
more danger at this point than at any other for 
young men — and young women too. Since I 
became pastor of this church a respectable 
young married woman told me, as an excuse 
for not giving me her church letter, that she 
had become so accustomed to drinking beer 
that she did not feel that she could get along 
without it. I am satisfied that this insidious 
enemy is making fresh inroads into respectable 
homes, and needs to be met by the repeated 
statement of the truth, and the setting forth of 
the facts with the greatest possible clearness. 



1 8 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

Another argument on this beer question that 
ought to be conclusive to any intelligent man or 
woman is this : Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the 
seat of one of the heaviest beer plants of this 
country. All over the West you see Milwau- 
kee beer advertised as being especially good for 
the health, the claim being made that it is a 
health-giving liquid, and that its use conduces 
to longevity. Now, the Northwestern Life In- 
surance Company of Milwaukee was established 
in that city nearly, perhaps quite, forty years 
ago ; it, too, is advertised all over the land as 
one of the great life insurance companies of the 
world, and as being especially wide-awake and 
shrewd in the management of its business. 
The greater number, if not all, of its directors 
are wealthy and responsible men of the city of 
Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin. Hav- 
ing lived neighbors to this lager beer business, 
they have watched its growth and its influence 
on the consumers. Surely it is interesting to 
know what conclusion these sensible, hard- 
headed directors of a life insurance company 
have reached in regard to the beer question. 
It is this : Knowing all about the healthfulness 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 1 9 

of lager beer, they have come to the conclu- 
sion that for their own sake, for the protec- 
tion of their own business, they can no longer 
grant a life insurance policy to a lager-beer 
brewer, no matter if he be a total abstainer at 
the time of application. They find that for 
such men the words of the poet are true : — 

" The grave doth gape 
For thee thrice wider than for other men." 

Brewers are liable to exceptional temptations, 
to which many of them succumb. So this hard- 
headed life insurance company will not grant a 
policy to a lager-beer brewer, to his clerk, to 
his book-keeper, or the man who hauls his kegs, 
or to any man employed about the brewery. 
Why ? These business-men say : " Because 
our statistics — which we have accumulated not 
as the result of fanaticism, or from any senti- 
mental attempt to reform mankind ; not because 
we pity the widows and orphans, but because 
we pity our own treasury — show that our busi- 
ness has been injured by the shortened lives of 
these men who drink lager beer. ,, What better 
testimony do you want than that ? 



20 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

Solomon's question, " Who hath redness of 
eyes ? " is answered now as of old upon every 
Brooklyn street where men tarry at the saloon. 
The dram-drinker's nose gets as red as his 
eyes, and frequently the rest of his face is as 
red as either. Dr. J. B. Johnson of Washing- 
ton gives this reason for the redness of eyes 
and nose of the dram-drinker. He says : " The 
dram-drinker's heart beats about thirteen times 
oftener in a minute than the heart of one who 
does not drink alcohol. The arteries, in conse- 
quence of this increased heart action, carry the 
blood to the nose quicker than the veins carry 
it back. The blood, therefore, remains con- 
gested in the over-filled vessels, and the nose, 
and the face as well, become habitually red. 
So stagnant is this blood, that when the dram- 
drinker's nose meets a sudden current of cold 
air, it immediately turns purple, and so remains 
until warm air restores the red color. So the 
red nose is caused by congestion. Every organ 
of the body is in a similar state — a warning of 
an impending fate not to be avoided." 

A man who was accustomed to indulge, en- 
tered a room of a hotel where a grave Quaker 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 21 

was sitting by the fire. Lifting a pair of green 
spectacles up on his forehead, and rubbing his 
inflamed eyes, the new-comer called for hot 
brandy and water. While he was waiting for 
it, he complained to the old Quaker that his 
eyes were getting weaker and weaker, and that 
the spectacles did not seem to do him any good. 
"I'll tell thee, friend," replied the Quaker, 
" what I think. It is that if thee were to wear 
the spectacles over thy mouth for a few months 
thy eyes would get well again.' ' 

But it is argued that in the great heat of 
summer we certainly need these drinks — some 
of them, at least — in a moderate degree. Well, 
let us put on the stand a world-famed and im- 
partial observer — Henry M. Stanley, the Afri- 
can explorer. At a great meeting in New York 
City, after his return from the founding of the 
Congo State, and just before going back to 
Africa in search of Emin Pasha, Mr. Stanley, 
while addressing the Methodist Preachers' Meet- 
ing, made this reply to questions concerning 
the health of tropical climates : — 

" You ask about the climate and healthfulness 
of the river valleys. How can you understand 



22 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

unless I specify certain points to illustrate ? 
A man has been with me on the upper Congo 
two years and nine months. He has distin- 
guished himself. I can recommend him to any- 
body for industry, fidelity, and attention to his 
duties. I wish to preserve him. He has slight 
dysenteric symptoms. I say to him : ' If I 
thought I could keep you from wine and liquor, 
I would send you to the coast, and send you home 
with good care ; and if I had authority to bind 
you under an oath, so that you could not touch 
a glass of liquor, I should be quite sure that you 
would arrive at home, and after a residence 
there of from three to six months you would 
be prepared to return/ He said : ' But I prom- 
ise you that I will not touch a drop of liquor/ — 
' I do not want to exercise any restraint over 
you, but my firm conviction is that if you do 
touch it you will never reach home. Good-by. 
Boys, carry him/ 

" I give him a dozen hammock-bearers. He 
reaches the coast. The doctors attend him. 
He recovers from the slight dysenteric malady. 
They say that now he is in a fit condition to go 
home. That evening he swaps his coat to a na- 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 2$ 

tive for a bottle of gin, and by midnight he is 
dead. 

" Lieutenant Grant is a splendid, stalwart- 
looking man from Luxembourg. He has an 
ambition to distinguish himself. He does not 
like the post assigned him ; so I give him other 
work, and fifty men to continue the road from 
Manyanga to Stanley Pool. He has with him 
one bottle of Burgundy. He will keep that for 
a gala day — the birthday of the king. He 
means to drink that to a large number of days 
to his Majesty. Some five miles on the road he 
meets a friend coming from Stanley Pool, and 
' How do you do ? I am delighted to see you/ 
The friend has just one bottle of brandy. They 
club together, and bring out, the one his bottle 
of Burgundy, and the other the brandy. Next 
morning the work must go on, of course. The 
trader bids him ' good-by/ and the officer must 
muster his working parties and proceed. But 
the effect of that night's dissipation is pretty 
soon seen. At nine o'clock the sun comes out 
strong. Before six o'clock that afternoon he is 
in his grave. 

" There was a Scotch engineer who came out 



24 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

recommended by the British East India Com- 
pany. He was a genius. He knew the tricks 
of making the rudest structure comfortable and 
home-like. He takes charge of the steamer 
Belgic to go down to the mouth of the Congo. 
Three days afterward I ask the captain where 
his engineer is. He is dead. He was found 
sitting on a chair with a bottle of brandy in his 
hand — dead." 

I think that will answer for heat. 

With the usual inconsistency of a bad cause, 
it is argued that in a rigorous climate one needs 
the warmth of alcoholic stimulation. But this, 
again, is contrary both to science and observa- 
tion. General Greely and Lieutenant Schwat- 
ka, the two most successful travelers of the 
English race who have made successful explo- 
rations in the frozen regions, unite in bearing 
testimony that the total abstainer, and not the 
moderate drinker, can best stand the rigor of a 
cold climate. 

Every time of epidemic tells the same story 
over and over, that even moderate drinkers of 
intoxicants thereby destroy the power of their 
system to resist disease. During the epidemic 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 25 

of cholera in New York City in 1832, of two 
hundred and four cases in the Park Hospital, 
only six were temperate, and all of these re- 
covered ; while one hundred and twenty-two of 
the others died. In Great Britain in the same 
year five-sixths of all who perished were intem- 
perate. In one or two villages every drunkard 
died, while not a single member of a temper- 
ance society lost his life. In Paisley, England, 
in 1848, there were three hundred and thirty- 
seven cases of cholera, and every case ex- 
cept one was a dram-drinker. The cases of 
cholera were one for every one hundred and 
eighty-one inhabitants ; but among the temper- 
ate portion, there was only one case to each two 
thousand. Of three hundred and eighty-six 
persons connected with the total abstinence so- 
cieties only one died ; and he was a reformed 
drunkard who had been a member of the tem- 
perance society only three months, and had not 
outlived the effects of former intemperance. In 
New Orleans, during the last epidemic, the order 
of the Sons of Temperance appointed a com- 
mittee to ascertain the number of deaths from 
cholera among their members. It was found 



26 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

that there were twelve hundred and forty-three 
members in the city and suburbs ; and among 
these only three deaths had occurred, being 
only one-sixth the average death-rate. In New 
York City, in 1832, only two out of five thou- 
sand members of temperance societies died. A 
distinguished New York physician in comment- 
ing on the situation at the time said : " Had it 
not been for the sale and use of spirits there 
had not been cholera enough in the city to have 
caused the cessation of business for a single 
day." In the city of Washington the health 
authorities became so convinced of the dangers 
of the drinking habit in connection with cholera, 
that they caused the saloons to be closed three 
months. What a pity they couldn't have a 
cholera scare in Washington every time Con- 
gress meets ! 

The same testimony comes from every yel- 
low-fever epidemic that sweeps over the South. 
Petroleum V. Nasby's humorous statement is 
verified over again every year in every saloon- 
cursed city in the land. Nasby makes Bas- 
com, the keeper of the " wet grocery " at the 
Corners, say regretfully : " And then deth is 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 2J 

another drorbak to my biznes. Ef a man cood 
only drink reglar, and live to be seventy, it 
wood be wuth while. But they don't do it. 
They are cut off by the crooel hand of deth 
jest when they begin to be yoosful to me. 
This one goes uv liver disease ; t'other one uv 
kidney trouble ; roomatism sets in and knocks 
one uv'm off his pins, and softenin' uv the 
brane kills another." 

Now, then, this is the constant and never- 
ceasing tendency of the saloon. It under- 
mines the health of the strongest laborer, un- 
settles the brain of the physician and the 
lawyer, as well as the man of business. In 
the language of an oft -quoted description : 
"What wreck is more shocking to behold 
than the wreck of a dissolute man ? — the 
vigor of life exhausted, and yet the first steps 
of an honorable career not taken ; in himself 
a lazar-house of disease ; dead, but, by a hea- 
thenish custom of society, not buried. Rogues 
have had the initial letter of their title burned 
in the palms of their hands. Even for murder 
Cain was only branded in the forehead ; but 
over the whole person of the debauchee or 



28 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

the inebriate the signature of infamy is writ- 
ten. How nature brands him with stigma 
and opprobrium ! How she hangs labels all 
over him to justify her disgust and to admon- 
ish others to beware of his example ! How 
she loosens all his joints, sends tremors along 
the muscles, and bends forward his frame, as 
if to bring him upon all fours, like kindred 
brutes, or to degrade him to the reptile's 
crawling ! How she disfigures his counte- 
nance, as if intent upon obliterating all traces 
of her own image, that she may swear she 
never made him ! How she pours rheum over 
his eyes, sends foul spirits to inhabit his breath, 
and shrieks as with a trumpet from every pore 
of his body, « Behold the beast ! ' " 

Now, you must all bear witness that I tell 
you the truth when I say that it is no acci- 
dent, nothing uncommon, but only its ordi- 
nary, legitimate work, when the liquor saloon 
produces a result like that. Let the saloon 
stand or fall by its ledger. 

John B. Finch once addressed a large audi- 
ence at an agricultural fair in a Western State 
on the subject of prohibition. In the after- 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 29 

noon he was walking about the grounds, when 
a man came to him and said : — 

" Your name is Finch ; you are the man 
who talked temperance this forenoon ? " 

"Yes; or prohibition." 

" Well, it all means the same thing. ,, 

Finch told him some people thought so. 

" Now," said he, " I do not want to insult 
you ; but I am a liquor dealer, and the man- 
agers of this fair did a dirty, mean thing in 
getting you here. This fair represents all 
the industries, and mine is a legitimate busi- 
ness. For them to get anybody here at a 
public fair to bring into disrepute one of the 
industries of the county is mean." 

Mr. Finch replied, "It does look as though 
there was reason for your complaint. My 
friend, I believe you have been insulted, and 
if I were in your place I would go over to 
the president's office and kick up the biggest 
row they ever had on this ground. You say 
this is for all the industries of the county." (He 
took out of his pocket a premium list, and con- 
tinued.) " Here is a premium for the nicest 
horses, the nicest cows, the best calves ; for 



30 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese ; for beets, 
turnips, squashes, and potatoes ; for farm ma- 
chinery ; for all kinds of ladies' work ; for 
cheese and butter. The managers of this 
fair seem to have offered a premium to en- 
courage every industry but yours. If I were 
you I would raise a row." 

The liquor man, considerably nonplussed, 
said, " What do you mean ? " 

Mr. Finch replied, " You do a legitimate 
business. You are manufacturing and turn- 
ing your products out all the time. They 
ought to offer a premium on some of your fin- 
ished jobs. They ought to put down twenty- 
five dollars for the best specimen of bummer 
made in a grog-shop in this county ; fifteen 
dollars for the next ; ten dollars for the next ; 
and a red ribbon for the fourth. If you will 
go with me to the president, we will give him 
fits for not doing it." 

But somehow that did not satisfy the liquor 
seller, but made him madder than ever. And 
yet that is the legitimate business of the 
liquor saloon — to prey upon the health and 
strength of the community, and leave it broken, 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO DISEASE. 3 I 

diseased, and debauched. And I call upon you 
every one to witness that this is the usual, 
ordinary, and logical work of a liquor saloon ; 
and that every time you by your influence, your 
negligence, or your vote, help to establish 01 
continue a liquor saloon in the city of Brook- 
lyn, you are helping to establish or continue 
a manufactory of disease, and a dangerous 
threat against the public health. 



$2 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 



ITEM NUMBER TWO. 

THE SALOON DEBTOR TO PRIVATE AND SOCIAL 
IMMORALITY. 

There is a remarkable little book by Dr. 
Clokley of New Albany, Indiana, entitled " Dy- 
ing at the Top," which, if I could, I would 
gladly put in the hands of every young man in 
America. The theme is drawn from a favor- 
ite apricot-tree that for many years stood in 
the author's dooryard, the very symbol of life 
and vigor. Its beautiful blossoms were always 
among the earliest heralds of the springtime, 
and the most delicious fruit soon followed the 
falling of the bloom. The tree was his pride 
and delight ; but one day he saw that the very 
topmost branches had withered, and he said, 
" Ah, our apricot-tree is death-smitten ; it is 
dying at the top." He carefully pruned off the 
top branches ; but the next season still others 
were withered, and in a little while there was 
not enough life left in the tree to mature the 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 33 

few blossoms that it put forth. On a careful 
examination he found that worms were at work 
at the root of the tree. They had worked their 
way up under the bark ; and, though the outside 
seemed firm and healthy, the tree was almost 
girdled by the unseen pests, and its death was 
inevitable. 

From the dying of the tree-top came the 
study of the young human tree. If we accept 
as true Goethe's statement that " the destiny of 
any nation at any given time depends on the 
opinions of the young men who are under twen- 
ty-five years of age," then the facts massed by 
this student of young American manhood are 
full of the most serious peril. He finds by the 
most carefully scrutinized statistics that one- 
fourth of the entire male population of the 
country, or about seven and a half millions, are 
young men between eighteen and thirty years 
of age. Young men of these ages form one- 
sixth of the entire population of our thriving 
cities, and those between twenty-one and thirty- 
one are almost one-half of our voting population. 
What a momentous statement it is to make, 
that, in the immorality of this great class, 



34 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

American society is "dying at the top." But 
after we have spent a few minutes looking at 
the facts, we are by no means ready to scout 
the statement. 

You surely have noticed that nearly every 
specimen of the great army of tramps — num- 
bering perhaps now nearly two hundred thou- 
sand men — who calls at your door is a young 
man. The universal testimony of railroad con- 
ductors and sheriffs, and all who have a special 
opportunity for observation, is that the over- 
whelming majority of these vagrants are but a 
little out of their boyhood, and nearly all of 
them under middle age. If I were speaking 
of crime as a whole, I could show you that sixty- 
seven out of one hundred of the entire criminal 
class of the country are young men. 

But I have a far more delicate and difficult 
task before me to-night, and a task that some- 
body must perform. It is a dreadful comment 
on the so-called modesty of the Christian world 
that its magazines, newspapers, and pulpits 
have been almost wholly silent on the so-called 
social vices, except as now and again they are 
portrayed in sensational accounts of crime. 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 35 

" Hush ! hush ! " the refined have cried at 
every public reference to them, till licentious- 
ness has well nigh undermined our social fabric. 
Its prevalence is truly appalling. The better 
classes have been ignorant of it, because it is a 
malady that moves in silence, and preys on its 
victims in the night-time and in concealment. 
It has no plain advertisements in the newspa- 
pers ; pastes up no flaming posters ; glows with 
no electric lights ; is surrounded by no bands of 
music. It is this secrecy that leaves so many 
parents and reformers in ignorance, and, when 
the thin veil is lifted, makes them incredulous 
of what is revealed. Certainly no other duty is 
more imperative in its demands upon the public 
teacher than to call serious attention to the ra- 
ging and destroying sins of these great cities ; 
the sin that lurks and corrupts unseen, and 
whose wide devastation is so much shielded by 
a false delicacy, or by circumstances which 
make men shrink as conscious that they lack 
skill, tact, and knowledge wisely to touch the 
most immedicable of evils. Listen to me, O 
young man, while I read the words of one of 
the wisest of observers that has ever lived. 



36 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

Hear Solomon in the seventh chapter of Prov- 
erbs : " Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister ; 
and call understanding thy kinswoman : that 
they may keep thee from the strange woman, 
from the stranger that flattereth with her 
words. For at the window of my house I 
looked through my casement, and beheld among 
the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, 
a young man void of understanding, passing 
through the street near her corner ; and he 
went the way to her house, in the twilight, 
in the evening, in the black and dark night : 
and, behold, there met him a woman with the 
attire of an harlot, and subtile of heart. ... So 
she caught him, and kissed him, and with an 
impudent face said unto him, I have peace offer- 
ings with me ; this day have I payed my vows. 
Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently 
to seek thy face, and I have found thee. I 
have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, 
with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt. I 
have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and 
cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love 
until the morning : let us solace ourselves with 
loves. For the goodman is not at home, he is 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 37 

gone a long journey : he hath taken a bag of 
money with him, and will come home at the 
day appointed. With her much fair speech she 
caused him to yield, with the flattering of her 
lips she forced him. He goeth after her 
straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or 
as a fool to the correction of the stocks ; till a 
dart strike through his liver ; as a bird hasteth 
to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his 
life. . . . Let not thine heart decline to her 
ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath 
cast down many wounded : yea, many strong 
men have been slain by her. Her house is the 
way to hell, going down to the chambers of 
death." 

If Solomon had lived in our time he would 
have seen that back of this poor lost woman, 
whose house is the way to hell, there is an in- 
nocent girlhood ; and the coming into her 
young life of an impure and unholy influence, 
which has at first deceived and led her astray, 
and so made of her the social pariah that she is 
to-day. Dr. Flower, in the Arena, truly says : 
" Nowhere is the absolute brutality of society 
so painfully apparent as in the treatment of 



38 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

women who have stepped aside from the paths 
of virtue. Nowhere is the revolting moral obli- 
quity of society so manifest as in the treatment 
of the fallen man who corrupts virginity. The 
girl to-day who falls under stress of circum- 
stances which might well appal the strongest 
heart, is exiled and driven to the lowest depths. 
The betrayer of this same maiden, even though 
his crime be known, is welcomed into the 
homes of people who call themselves respect- 
able, is permitted to marry a pure girl, and be- 
come the father of children cursed before they 
are born with the lecherous appetites of a mor- 
ally depraved man. No better condition can 
be brought about without plain speaking; and 
though the subject is a painful and exceedingly 
unpleasant one, it is the duty of those who be- 
lieve that an enduring civilization is possible 
only where steady morality prevails, to face this 
question with perfect frankness, no matter how 
much it may offend the lepers of conventional 
society or shock a sickly sentimentality." 

The Chicago Inter-Ocean, commenting on the 
fact that out of thirty-two young men in New 
York City who were examined for a West Point 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 39 

cadetship, only nine were accepted as physically 
sound, says : " Such a note might well make the 
young men of our cities pause for a moment's 
thought. Beer, the cigarette, too much amuse- 
ment, and the hidden vices, are making havoc 
with the physical manhood of all our towns and 
cities." A leading railroad man who had a 
large number of men under him, stated that 
so far as he was able to find out, every one of 
them was in the habit of visiting brothels. An- 
other employer said, " I have twenty-five men 
under me, and only three of them refrain from 
intoxicating drinks. " When asked how many 
of them refrained from sinning with women, he 
hesitated a moment, and then replied, " About 
as many." 

These terrible facts mean not only the utter 
overthrow of young men, but of thousands of 
the fairest and truest young women. Through- 
out all the land hundreds of homes are being 
plundered of their most priceless jewels. That 
old legend of a monster, to satisfy whose vora- 
cious appetite a city had year by year to sacri- 
fice a number of its virgins, who, amid the 
lamentation of their mothers and the grief of 



40 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER, 

their kindred, were led away trembling to his 
bloody den, is no fable here in Brooklyn and 
New York. The monster is among us. Do 
you know what is the inevitable result of 
such a sowing? It can only by the very 
law of cause and effect produce a ruinous 
harvest. 

If we do not want such a harvest, we must 
cease to sow that kind of seed. Tramps and 
scoundrels and criminals and ruined women are 
as certainly manufactured articles as Brussels 
carpets or locomotive engines. If we do not 
wish to produce them by our civilization, we 
have only to remove the causes of which they 
are the result. Junius Henri Brown states his 
belief in heredity thus : "The Rothschilds have 
been men possessed of rare genius for pecuniary 
planning, and for bearing the largest and most 
difficult enterprises to successful issues. They 
transmit the properties, material and mental, 
which they have inherited. Their blood flows 
in kindred channels generation after generation, 
and every drop of it dances to the jingle of 
coin. From foundation to turret they are built 
up and bulwarked with cash. In due process 



THE SALOON' DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 4 1 

of development the future Rothschilds may 
become sacks of shining sovereigns." 

Mr. R. L. Dugdale has written a book en- 
titled, " The Jukes," in which he shows that in 
seven generations a single abandoned home be- 
queathed to the world twelve hundred descen- 
dants, a large majority of whom were idiots, 
imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, prosti- 
tutes, and criminals. Seven hundred and nine 
of the twelve hundred have been registered, and 
their history studied in this terrible book. He 
finds that harlotry in the community at large 
averages not quite two out of every hundred 
women ; it was over twenty-nine times more 
frequent among the " Juke " women. In the 
line of Ada Juke, better known as "Margaret, 
the Mother of Criminals," it was found that 
crime among the men was thirty times greater 
than that in the community in general. Of 
the five hundred and thirty-five children born, 
nearly twenty-four per cent were illegitimate. 
Among the women of this Juke family the 
number of paupers was seven and a half, and 
among the men nine, times greater than in the 
community at large. Summing up the crimes 



42 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

and pauperism of this single family, Mr. Dug- 
dale estimates that in seventy-five years it cost 
the public over one million two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars, without reckoning the 
cash paid for whisky, or taking into account 
the entailment of pauperism and crime of the 
survivors in succeeding generations, and the 
incurable disease, idiocy, and insanity growing 
out of this debauchery, and reaching farther 
than we can calculate. 

But, you say, what have all these terrible and 
startling facts to do with the licensed liquor 
saloon ? I answer, Much ! every way. 

It is the legitimate effect of the goods that 
are sold in the liquor saloon to excite and in- 
flame every lust and passion that degrades and 
brutalizes humanity. The saloon and the brothel 
are often combined into one ; and they go hand 
in hand, with the closest possible fellowship. 
They are the gigantic twin corrupters of the 
youth of America. You cannot hurt one of 
them without hurting the other. Not long ago 
the Wine and Spirit Gazette made this frank 
confession : " The Phillips' law, passed by the 
legislature of Ohio, forbidding the sale of liquor 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 43 

in the houses of ill-fame, went into effect on 
May 25. The importers of champagne in this 
city are beginning to feel the loss of business in 
Ohio. Piper Heidsieck representatives in Cin- 
cinnati claim that the enforcement of the law in 
the big cities of Ohio will cost them forty thou- 
sand dollars annually ; Munn company repre- 
sentatives estimate their loss at thirty thousand 
dollars ; importers of Pomerey Sec claim that 
they will lose sixty thousand dollars ; and the 
other importers will suffer proportionate losses. 
The local brewers, also, feel the effects of the 
law, as many of the houses in Cincinnati and 
Cleveland sold large quantities of beer. ,, How 
clearly this reveals the sensitive nerves of kin- 
ship between the liquor saloon and the house of 
prostitution ! 

The social influence of the saloon alone is 
enough to condemn it forever. There are, no 
doubt, exceptions ; but no man can successfully 
deny that, as a class, the saloon-keepers in this 
country are of the lowest character. "They 
are impure, profane, irreligious, vulgar, and often 
criminal ; and their saloons are like themselves. 
In no place as here — outside of the brothel — 



44 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

is the atmosphere so saturated with all that is 
vicious and corrupting. Here one meets with 
the world's filthiest characters, filthiest pictures, 
and filthiest conversation ; because here congre- 
gate society's filthiest souls." The saloon is 
the stem around which cluster all the festering 
vices of the community. A leading worker for 
reform in New York says that the suppression 
of the curse of strong drink would include the 
destruction of ninety-nine out of every one hun- 
dred of the houses of ill-fame ; that each of 
these brothels is an unlicensed liquor saloon, 
whose parlor is in every sense a bar-room, where 
strong drink is freely dispensed. By suppress- 
ing this drink business — this prime source of 
crime — we would stop the supply of raw mate- 
rial for these criminal houses, and make it impos- 
sible to keep the victims already thus employed. 
A missionary on going at the written request of 
one of these lost women to rescue her from a 
den of infamy, remonstrated with her for being 
even then slightly under the influence of drink. 
" Why," was her indignant reply, as tears filled 
her eyes, " do you suppose we girls are so dead 
that we have lost our memories of mother, home, 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY, 45 

and everything good ? No, sir ; and if it were 
not for liquor and opium, we would all have to 
run away from our present life, or go mad by 
pleadings of our own hearts and home memo- 
ries. I don't know one girl," she continued, re- 
ferring to her numerous associates, "that does 
not either drink or use morphine ! " 

A recent report of the chaplain of the Mag- 
dalen Society of New York shows that of 
eighty-nine fallen women in the asylum at one 
time, all but two ascribed their fall to the effect 
of the drink habit. A lady missionary makes 
the statement that of two thousand sinful wo- 
men known personally to her, there were only 
ten cases in which intoxicating liquors were not 
largely responsible for their fall. George Fred- 
erick Parsons, in his famous Atlantic Monthly 
articles, made a striking comparison between 
the practices of modern society in legalizing the 
liquor traffic and the horrible cruelty of ancient 
times. "The ancient Greeks, ,, says Mr. Par- 
sons, "had inherited the practice of infanticide 
from savage ancestors. They became so inured 
to it that when the custom of exposing children 
gradually superseded child-murder, there were 



46 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

not wanting moralists to deplore the change as 
denoting the rise of what moderns would call a 
' sickly sentimentalism.' The fate of exposed 
children, sad though it was, elicited no practical 
sympathy. When a Greek mother thus aban- 
doned her infant, it was what her neighbors did. 
It was social crime disguised by custom. If we 
are prepared to be candid with ourselves, it may 
not be difficult to show that even the barbarism 
of ancient Greece is not so far behind us as we 
should like to be able to feel that it is. We do 
not kill our children. We do not any more ex- 
pose them after the antique mode. We cherish 
them in their infancy, rear them to adolescence, 
and then send them forth to put their immature 
vitality against the most elaborate, skilfully de- 
vised, and comprehensive machinery for mincing 
human beings that the world has ever seen." 

A physician of Boston was standing on a 
street corner in New York City on the day of 
General Grant's funeral, waiting for a street-car. 
Another gentleman, a stranger to him, stood by 
his side. Suddenly a loud voice shouted from 
behind, " Can you show me the way to hell ? " 
They both turned, when a drunken man stag- 



THE SALOON DEBTOR TO IMMORALITY. 47 

gered toward them, repeating his question, " Can 
you show me the way to hell ? " The other 
gentleman seemed nonplussed ; but the physi- 
cian stepped to one side, and pointing to the 
white lettering on the glass which his back had 
concealed, said : " Here it is. This is the guide- 
board — ' Beer Saloon/ You are not out of the 
way. This is a sure road ; many have gone 
this road before you, and you will find plenty of 
companions." 

It is against the liquor saloon, as the most 
aggressive, the most lustful and dangerous, foe 
of the purity of social life that I call you to 
give your immediate and continued antagonism. 
This is a question where there can be no doubt 
as to where lies the right and the wrong. Abra- 
ham Lincoln said about slavery, " If slavery is 
not wrong, then nothing is wrong." So I say 
to you, "If the saloon traffic, with its train of 
disease and lust, is not wrong, then nothing is 
wrong." The saloon is the moral lazar-house of 
society. All the rivers of the earth could not 
wash it clean, and all the winds of heaven can- 
not carry off its foul stench. To license such 
an incarnation of diabolism for gold, much or 



48 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

little, is the darkest blot on the civilization of 
our times. 

In the name of the pure mother who bore 
you ; in the name of the innocent children who 
climb on your knee, and nestle in your arms, and 
call you father or mother, brother or sister, or 
friend ; in the name of all goodness as opposed 
to all badness in modern society, — I call upon 
you to put your influence, your prayer, your 
speech, your vote, in deathless antagonism to 
the saloon ! 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 49 



ITEM NUMBER THREE. 

THE SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 

The American home that is true to its herit- 
age in this Republic " of the people, and by the 
people, and for the people," is the proudest 
fortress of modern civilization. Men who have 
always lived in the midst of thickly populated 
regions, where home-life generally prevails, do 
not know how to appreciate the home-life at its 
full worth. Born and reared as I was in the 
far West, living up to my early manhood in the 
midst of frontier conditions, seeing much of life 
in mining-camps where great multitudes of men 
were gathered together without the restraining 
and comforting influences of home, I know by 
contrast the divine power of a good home. The 
home is the conservator of everything that is 
good. No matter what trickery or fraud or 
selfishness a man may have to contend with in 
the day's business, or how bitter and cynical it 
may make him, if he comes back to a clean, 



50 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

pure, loving home at night, in the presence of a 
true, fond wife, and the caresses of innocent 
children, all his bitterness and selfishness vanish 
away. Home-life, with the generous, unselfish 
love of kindred, is a sunshine which awakens 
into growth all the truest impulses of a man's 
being. It is impossible for any man to go from 
his home to his business in the morning with 
the kiss of a good woman upon his lips, and the 
soft caress of baby fingers lingering in pleasant 
memories on his neck, without feeling more of 
brotherliness for his fellows, a truer confidence 
in human nature, and a deeper devotion to 
make himself worthy of such holy affection. 
Communism and anarchy have their sternest 
foes and their surest antidote in the clean, pure 
homes of the people. It is not often that a 
man goes out from a noble home, no matter 
how humble it may be, where his spirit has 
been elevated by the blessed influences of 
womanhood's homage, and childhood's clinging 
tenderness has lingered about him — rare in- 
deed it is that a man goes from a scene like 
that to excite riot, or to conspire against the 
safety of the community. 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 5 I 

Anything that attacks the home as an insti- 
tution, that invades its sanctity, that degrades 
father or mother or children, that takes from it 
not only the physical comforts but the mutual 
confidence and love which make it a place where 
weary men grow strong again, and worn and 
nervous women are refreshed and encouraged ; 
anything that renders it an unsafe place for chil- 
dren to grow up into a pure and healthy manhood 
and womanhood, loving God and hoping the best 
for humanity ; anything that stands in antago- 
nism to the safety, the purity, and the peace 
of the home — is the most deadly enemy to the 
church, the state, and civilization. 

One of the sternest indictments that can be 
made against the saloon is that it is the most 
deadly foe of the American home that was ever 
conceived. If Satan himself were to call a con- 
vention of all the haters of humanity, of all the 
cold-blooded and cruel spirits on earth or in 
hell, nobody would believe that the combined 
counsel of their evil intelligence would ever be 
able to devise anything more effective in its 
power to destroy home-life than the licensed 
liquor saloon. The liquor saloon has the capa- 



52 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

city of absorbing everything that is beautiful 
and pure and joyous in the home ; itself, mean- 
while, becoming no better. It is the mongoose 
of our civilization. Many of you doubtless have 
read in Rudyard Kipling's jungle stories the 
vivid description of Rikki Kikki's fight with the 
snake. The hero of the story is the mongoose. 
The mongoose was introduced into Jamaica 
some twenty years ago by the sugar planters, 
who hoped in that way to kill off the rats which 
preyed upon their crops of sugar-cane. The 
mongoose is a marvelously prolific animal, hav- 
ing three breeding seasons a year, and producing 
from five to thirteeen little mongooses at every 
birth. As a rat -killer, the mongoose is a great 
success ; and it was not very long before a rat 
was a rare article in Jamaica. But as the supply 
of rats failed, the supply of mongooses increased, 
and this industrious little animal began to en- 
large his bill of fare. First he took in black 
crabs, ground-birds, snakes, toads, and insect- 
destroying birds. As these disappeared, very 
naturally beetles, flies, moths, and ticks multi- 
plied. And still the mongoose filled the land, 
until now he destroys young pigs, kids, lambs, 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 53 

calves, puppies, kittens, all kinds of poultry, all 
kinds of game such as quail, guinea fowl, snipe, 
and ground-doves, and all sorts of birds that nest 
near the ground. He is not satisfied even with 
animal life ; for dessert he has learned to enjoy 
bananas, pine-apples, young corn, pears, sweet 
potatoes, cocoa, and peas. Fish, also, he de- 
vours ; and, indeed, as necessity comes on, he 
seems capable of eating up everything that is 
of precious value to humanity on the whole 
island of Jamaica. 

Now, the liquor saloon is the mongoose of 
this country. Dr. Rainsford says that it is the 
poor man's club, and that as such it must be 
protected and defended ; that, indeed, he needs 
it so badly that it must be kept open on Sun- 
day, so that he may have a chance to spend his 
hours of leisure there ; that the laboring-man, 
so tired and worn out with his day's work, must 
have some pleasant place where he can get 
away from his narrow tenement-house rooms, 
and while away his resting hours. It is strange 
that these dear brethren like Dr. Rainsford for- 
get that these narrow tenement-house rooms 
are good enough for the wife and the babies 



54 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

seven days in the week, and seven nights as 
well. But the trouble is, the saloon, which its 
defenders say must be perpetuated as the poor 
man's club, to eat up the rats of his leisure 
hours, and furnish him a place to kill time, isn't 
satisfied with that kind of fare. This licensed 
mongoose not only gulps down the working- 
man's leisure, but it swallows without blinking 
his hard-earned money, his physical health and 
strength, his good temper, his love for his wife, 
his fondness for his children ; and then, seeking 
for new worlds to conquer, it goes on eating up 
the necessary food for his family ; it eats up the 
shoes off the little girl's feet, the coat off 
the little boy's back, and the roses out of their 
mother's cheeks, and all that was sweet and 
pure and holy in their once happy home. 

A commercial traveler who had been ac- 
customed to drink quite freely with his com- 
rades, astonished them by saying, when the 
bottle was passed in the smoking-car one day, 
* No ; I won't drink with you to-day, boys. 
The fact is, boys, I have sworn off." He was 
greeted with shouts of laughter by the jolly 
crowd around him. They put the bottle under 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES, 55 

his nose, and indulged in many jokes at his ex- 
pense ; but he refused to drink, and was rather 
serious about it. 

" What's the matter with you, old boy ? " 
sang out one. " If youVe quit drinking, some- 
thing's up; tell us what it is." 

" Well, boys, I will, though I know you will 
laugh at me ; but I'll tell you all the same. 
I have been a drinking-man all my life, and 
have kept it up since I was married, as you all 
know. I love whisky ; it's as sweet in my 
mouth as sugar, and God only knows how I'll 
quit it. For seven years not a day has passed 
over my head that I didn't have at least one 
drink. But I am done. Yesterday I was in 
Chicago. Down on South Clark Street a cus- 
tomer of mine keeps a pawn-shop in connection 
with his other business. I called on him ; and 
while I was there a young man of not more 
than twenty-five, wearing threadbare clothes, 
and looking as hard as if he had not seen a 
sober day for a month, came in with a little 
package in his hand. Tremblingly he un- 
wrapped it, and handed the articles to the 
pawnbroker, saying, * Give me ten cents.' 



$6 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

And, boys, what do you suppose it was ? A 
pair of baby's shoes ; little things, with the 
buttons only a trifle soiled, as if they had been 
worn once or twice. * Where did you get 
these ? ' asked the pawnbroker. ' Got 'em at 
home/ replied the man, who had an intelligent 
face and the manner of a gentleman, despite his 
sad condition. * My wife bought 'em for our 
baby. Give me ten cents for 'em ; I want a 
drink.' i You had better take those back to 
your wife. The baby will need them,' said the 
pawnbroker. 

" ' No, she won't ; because she's dead. She's 
lying- at home now; died last night.' As he 
said this, the poor fellow broke down, bowed 
his head on the show-case, and cried like a 
child. 

"Boys," said the drummer, "you can laugh 
if you please, but I — I have a baby of my own 
at home, and by the help of God I'll never 
drink another drop." 

Then he got up and went into another car. 
His companions glanced at each other through 
dim eyes and silence. It did not seem to be 
funny to anybody. No one laughed ; but some- 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 57 

how the bottle disappeared ; and soon each was 
sitting in a seat by himself, pretending to read 
a newspaper. 

Don't for a moment imagine that this is a 
strange, unique, and exceptional case. It is the 
legitimate business of the licensed liquor saloon 
to do that kind of work in the home-life of the 
people. It is a wreckage business from first to 
last. If a wrecker builds a false light on the 
coast, and lures a vessel to destruction, so that 
he may plunder the bodies of the drowned 
sailors, he is sent to the penitentiary or the gal- 
lows. But if he is a cunning enough wrecker 
to come and build his false light on the street- 
side in Brooklyn, he can have a special dis- 
pensation granted for his benefit by the city 
government and under State law ; and every 
policeman's button and club that he sees pass- 
ing up and down the street will be pledged 
to defend him in carrying on his devilish 
business. 

A good home where love abides, and where 
each member of the family not only feels sym- 
pathy and tenderness for the others, but where 
there is a mutual pride in each other's good- 



58 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

ness and strength ; where the children look up 
to father and mother with loving admiration, 
always thinking of them with chivalrous fidel- 
ity ; and where father and mother think of their 
children with pride in their innocency, and fond 
ambition for their success and triumph in life, 
— such a home is the mightiest fortress for the 
courage of the individual members of the family 
that could be devised or imagined. One goes 
out from a home like that with the assurance of 
a general when his base of supplies is impreg- 
nable and abundant. But how many times the 
liquor saloon makes its insidious entrance into 
such a home, and strikes the dagger to the 
very heart of all that peace and comfort ! 
Many a home I have known that had in it 
everything heart could wish until such an 
enemy invaded it, and afterward all its seem- 
ing grandeur and beauty was but a hollow 
mockery. Gold was yet left in abundance, the 
mansion was still there, the carpets were as 
soft, the table as heavily loaded, the books and 
pictures as abundant and beautiful as ever ; but 
the peace, the confidence, the heart, had gone 
out from that once blessed abode. 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 59 

Mrs. Mary A. Livermore has recently retold 
the story of a battle in the South-west under 
General Thomas. The Federal troops had 
gained a great victory ; and General Thomas, 
on a high vantage-ground, watching the fleeing 
hosts, and hearing the shouts that rent the air, 
exclaimed, " It was Geary's men that won the 
fight ! How splendidly they behaved ! How 
magnificently he handled them ! Where is 
he ? Bring him here, and we will wait for 
him ! He must be congratulated, promoted, 
brevetted on the spot ! " 

The staff-officers ran in one direction and 
another to find him ; for it was thought by 
some that he was leading the pursuit, and 
by others that he had gone to his tent. 

At last he was found in his tent, sitting in 
the dim light of a candle fastened in the up- 
turned handle of a bayonet, his arms folded, 
his figure bent, every feature of his face indi- 
cating despondency. His brother officer rushed 
in and took him by the hand, " Geary, I con- 
gratulate you ! It is your men that have won 
the day ! How magnificently they behaved ! It 
is to you we are indebted for the victory ; and 



60 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

I am sent by General Thomas to escort you 
to the field, where he and his staff-officers 
wait, and you are to be brevetted on the field. 
I thank God that you did not receive a scratch ! 
I thought you were gone three or four times, 
as I saw you in the thick of the rain of iron 
hail." 

" Oh, do not congratulate me ! do not con- 
gratulate me ; I cannot bear it ! Tell General 
Thomas I cannot come. Excuse me to him. 
Tell him I do not care for promotion. Tell 
him I do not ask anything in the way of 
congratulation.'' 

" Why, you don't expect I will go back to 
General Thomas with an answer like that. 
Rouse yourself, man ! It is the inevitable 
result of reaction after a battle. Let me 
take you to General Thomas. You are not 
wounded ; nothing has happened to you. You 
are all right. You haven't a scratch." 

"Oh, I am wounded!" said General Geary; 
" I am wounded ; I am so sorely wounded that 
never again shall I know any surcease of pain ! 
I am so sorely hurt that there is no surgery in 
all the world that can heal my wound ! I am 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 6 1 

mortally wounded ; I am shot through the 
heart ! " 

" Why, what do you mean ? " asked his 
friend. " Your appearance, except your de- 
pressed spirits, does not indicate the least 
injury ! " 

Then, rising, General Geary walked over to 
the corner of the tent, and turned back a blan- 
ket, revealing the dead body of his only son, 
his chief of staff, who, galloping beside his 
father in the hot pursuit, had received a minie 
ball through the heart. The father, seeing 
him reel in the saddle, took him upon his own 
horse, and rode back to his tent, the sounds of 
rejoicing seeming to him like mockery, and the 
victory like defeat. 

So you and I know men and women who are 
mortally wounded, who have been shot through 
the heart. The young life that was dearer 
to them than their own has received a death- 
wound more terrible than a rifle-ball ever gave ; 
for that can only destroy the physical life, while 
the good name, the pure manhood, the noble 
soul, are left unsullied. I know men who have 
seen the liquor saloon take not only the phys- 



62 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

ical life of their sons, but take also their good 
name, defile their pure minds, debauch them 
and degrade them, until they were but pitiful 
human wrecks. Who knows how to measure a 
sorrow like that ? And yet every year there 
are multitudes of homes in Brooklyn that are 
being thus marred and blighted ; and it is the 
natural, logical work of the licensed liquor 
saloon to do just that. 

I would to God I could arouse every one 
here to-night to a generous fight in behalf of 
those who are being wounded and oppressed 
and destroyed by the liquor saloon. Let us not 
think only of our own homes, but let us so live 
and so act that the homes of the poorest and 
humblest shall be safe. God has so ordered 
the universe that one insures best his own care, 
and the good of those that are specially dear to 
him, by giving himself to generous, self-deny- 
ing service to all. 

Possibly some of you have heard Major Hil- 
ton tell an incident which once occurred while 
he was on the Scottish coast. Just at the 
break of day the people of a little hamlet on 
the coast were awakened by the boom of a can- 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 63 

non over the stormy waves. They knew what 
it meant, for frequently they had heard before 
the same signal of distress. Some poor souls 
were out beyond the breakers, perishing on a 
wrecked vessel, and in their last extremity call- 
ing wildly for human help. The people has- 
tened from their houses to the shore. Out 
there in the distance was a dismantled vessel, 
pounding itself to pieces. Perishing fellow- 
beings were clinging to the rigging, and every 
now and then some one of them was swept off 
into the sea by the furious waves. The life- 
saving crew was soon gathered. 

" Man the life-boat ! " cried the men. 

" Where is Hardy ? " 

But the foreman of the crew was not there, 
and the danger was imminent. Aid must be 
immediate, or all would be lost. The next in 
command sprang into the frail boat, followed 
by the rest, all taking their lives in their hands 
in the hope of saving others. Oh, how those 
on the shore watched their brave loved ones as 
they dashed on, now over, now almost under 
the waves ! They reached the wreck. Like 
angels of deliverance they filled their craft with 



64 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

almost dying men — men lost but for them. 
Back again they toiled, pulling for the shore, 
bearing their precious freight. 

The first man to help them land was Hardy, 
whose words rang above the roar of the break- 
ers, " Are you all here ? Did you save them 
all ? " 

With saddened faces the reply came : " All 
but one. He couldn't help himself at all. We 
had all we could carry. We couldn't save the 
last one." 

" Man the life-boat again ! " shouted Hardy. 
" I will go. What ! leave one there to die 
alone? A fellow-creature there, and we on 
shore ? Man the life-boat now ! we'll save him 
yet." 

But who is this aged woman with worn gar- 
ments and disheveled hair, with agonized en- 
treaty falling upon her knees beside this brave, 
strong man ? It was his mother ! 

" O my son ! your father was drowned in a 
storm like this. Your brother Will left me 
eight years ago, and I have never seen his face 
since the day he sailed. No doubt he, too, has 
found a watery grave. And now you will be 



SALOON DEBTOR TO RUINED HOMES. 65 

lost, and I am old and poor. Oh, stay with 
me!" 

" Mother," cried the man, " where one is in 
peril, there's my place. If I am lost, God will 
surely care for you." 

The plea of earnest faith prevailed. With a 
" God bless you, my boy ! " she released him, 
and speeded him on his way. 

Once more they watched and prayed and 
waited — those on the shore — while every 
muscle was strained toward the fast-sinking 
ship by those in the life-saving boat. At last 
it reached the vessel. The clinging figure was 
lifted and helped to its place, where strong 
hands took it in charge. Back came the boat. 
How eagerly they looked and called in encour- 
agement, and cheered as it came nearer ! 

" Did you get him ? " was the cry from the 
shore. 

Lifting his hands to his mouth to trumpet 
the words on in advance of their landing, Hardy 
called back above the roar of the storm : " Tell 
mother it is brother Will ! " 



66 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 



ITEM NUMBER FOUR. 

THE SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. 

The claim is sometimes made that the liquor 
traffic employs a great many men, and that if 
it were done away with the world would be full 
of idlers, thrown out of employment because of 
the discontinuing of a large industry. But it 
is very easy to show that this is only one of 
the devil's sophistries. It is not hard to get 
at it in so simple a way that any of these boys 
and girls here can understand. The liquor 
business is represented by hundreds of millions 
of dollars, and employed in a certain year, not 
long since, five hundred and thirty-one thou- 
sand, one hundred and sixty-eight men. Ac- 
cording to the United States census statistics, 
it requires $3,505.75 invested in liquor manu- 
facturing, to employ one man. In the ten 
leading industries of the United States, repre- 
senting that same year a capital of nearly 
$3,000,000,000, it required only $1,021 to give 



SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. 67 

employment to a single man. Now, you can 
easily see that if you take the money used in 
manufacturing death and destruction in our 
domestic, social, and national life, and turn it 
into legitimate channels, it would give employ- 
ment to more than three times as many laborers 
as it now does. Oh, but, somebody says, that 
would lead to over-production. But, my friend, 
I assure you that it is not over-production that 
is the matter with us in the legitimate chan- 
nels of trade. It is under-consumption, because 
the money is wasted in dissipation and vice. 

Suppose you look at it from another stand- 
point. Eighteen per cent of the product of the 
ten leading industries of the United States is 
paid to labor as wages, while only 10 per cent 
of the product of liquor manufacture goes to 
labor. Thus the liquor business helps indirectly 
to foster a monopolistic class. Put the money 
invested in liquor manufacturing into legitimate 
trade, and nearly twice as much of the income 
goes to labor. 

Look at it from still another standpoint. 
The value of the liquor product, compared with 
the capital invested, was on a given year 1.22 



68 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

per cent, while the value of the product of the 
ten leading industries, compared with the in- 
vestment, was 1.93 per cent; so it is easy to 
see that if you invest the liquor money in 
other business the result will be a proportion- 
ate increase, in the wealth produced, of 71 per 
cent, of which nearly twice as much goes to 
labor as now. And it is a safe thing to say 
that whatever benefits labor is of the greatest 
possible benefit to business at large; for, after 
all, the laborer is the great consumer of the 
world. 

If the $900,000,000 annually spent for liquor, 
and the great majority of it by laboring-men, 
was to go next year for boots, shoes, clothing, 
food, books, magazines, pictures, and education, 
there would be such a revival of business 
throughout the world that we should think the 
millennium had arrived. The bugbear of over- 
production would be dispelled at once. More 
goods of all kinds would be demanded, more 
would be manufactured, multiplied labor would 
be required to make and sell them, wages 
would advance, and every class of society would 
feel a tremendous uplift. 



SALOOX DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. 69 

I have been led, during the past few years, 
to give a large amount of attention to the 
sorrowful life led by the very poor in our 
cities. I have looked with pity upon the 
starved and hopless victims of the sweat-shop. 
In pursuit of these studies I have shivered in 
winter and melted in summer in the dens and 
attics of slum tenement houses. As I have 
come to know something of the heart-breaking 
miseries which really exist in our great cities, 
I have grown to hate as a monster more intol- 
erable to me than ever before this Moloch 
traffic in strong drink, which gorges itself, 
year after year, with ten times enough of the 
good gifts of God's providence and man's 
industry and genius to feed every hungry 
stomach, clothe every ragged back, and com- 
fortably house every homeless family in the 
land. It is worse even than that. It not only 
gorges itself on these wholesome gifts of God, 
but it digests them into a witch's broth 
that tempts to moral disaster and ruin multi- 
tudes of the harassed and wretched beings 
who have already been plundered by its cruel 
rapacity. 



yo THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

The distinguished Roman Catholic Bishop 
Ireland, in an earnest address to the Irish 
people of America on the injurious results of 
the saloon, says : " Compute in any one city 
the sums of money spent by Irishmen in Irish 
saloons, and you will be affrighted. In one 
Western city of America there are fifteen 
hundred saloons kept by Irishmen for the 
benefit of Irishmen. Allow the average re- 
ceipts of each saloon to be fifteen dollars a day, 
and you have an annual expenditure for liquor 
by the Irish of that city of $8,212,500. Add 
to these sums the value of time lost by drink, 
of wages unearned because men visit saloons, 
and $12,000,000 per annum is not too high a 
figure to represent the annual losses to the 
Irish of one city. Repeat the calculation with 
due proportion from St. Paul to New York, 
from Boston to Philadelphia, and you will 
know," says this earnest bishop, " w r hy we are 
poor. It is idle talk to advise the people to 
secure homes of their own, to leave the crowded 
cities, to gain by labor and economy a compe- 
tence for themselves and their families ; we 
must lay the ax to the root of the evil, first 



SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. ?l 

teaching them to shun the saloon, which is 
swallowing up their earnings." 

The bishop's closing figure of swallowing 
reminds me of the story of Tom, who met an 
old friend, who was formerly a prosperous 
young lumberman up in Northern Minnesota, 
but whose bad habit of drinking brought him 
to a pretty " hard up " condition. 

" How are you ? " asked Tom. 

"Pretty well, thank you; but I have just 
seen a doctor, to have him examine my throat. " 

" What's the matter ? " 

" Well, the doctor couldn't give me any 
encouragement. At least, he couldn't find 
what I want to find." 

" What did you expect him to find ? " 

" I asked him to look down my throat for the 
saw-mill and farm that had gone down there in 
drink." 

" And did he see anything of it ? " 

" No ; but he advised me if ever I got an- 
other mill to run it by water." 

Dr. Theodore Cuyler, who addressed us with 
such eloquence and earnestness last night, 
aptly calls the saloons " Banks for Losings." 



J2 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

He said the only interest paid on deposits is in 
redness of eyes, foulness of breath, remorse of 
conscience, and loss of health, happiness, and 
character. Every one who makes a deposit 
gains a loss. One man goes into the bank 
with a full pocket, and comes out empty. An- 
other goes in with a good character, and comes 
out with the word " drunk " written upon his 
bloated countenance. Many a clerk with a 
good situation has entered one of these " Banks 
for Losings/' and when he came out his situa- 
tion was gone. Many prosperous business-men 
have lost their business in these banks. I 
knew an old neighbor, who lived the next farm 
to us when I was a boy, who lost a farm a mile 
square and a big herd of cattle, a stableful of 
fine horses, a flock of sheep, and several thou- 
sands of money on interest. He deposited 
them all in the saloon in a country town five 
miles away ; and I saw him after the last cent 
was gone, and his wife had died of a broken 
heart, and his children were wandering waifs, 
a poor, old, ragged, staggering bankrupt. If a 
correct sign were posted over the door of the 
Brooklyn saloons to-night, there would be a 



SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. 73 

great deal of astonishment as the people went 
down through the streets to-morrow to busi- 
ness. They would read, if we were to follow 
Dr. Cuyler's figure, something like this: 
" Banks for Losings. Open at all hours. 
Nothing taken on deposit but good money. 
Nothing paid back but disgrace and disease, 
degradation and death. An extra dividend of 
delirium tremens will be paid to old depositors. 
A free pass to hell insured to those who pay 
well at the counter. Tickets to all cemeteries, 
entitling the bearer to a drunkard's grave in 
the pauper section. All children of depositors 
sent without charge to the orphan asylum or 
the almshouse — for other people to support. " 
I submit to you that that would be an honest 
sign of the regular, every-day business which is 
expected of the licensed liquor saloons of the 
city of Brooklyn. 

How ridiculous it is for the political dema- 
gogues and party bosses to tell us that we 
must continue the liquor saloons in order to 
make business lively, or to keep down the 
taxes and support the government ! It reminds 
me of a juggler out at Lewiston, Idaho, and his 



74 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

experience in fooling a company of ignorant 
Indians. The juggler went around among the 
Indian wigwams, and did not attract very much 
attention until he seemed to take a fancy to a 
small dog, with which he finally made friends 
by patting and petting him. He asked the 
Indians how much they would take for him ; to 
which they replied that they did not want to 
sell him. The juggler said, " Him very valua- 
ble dog," at the same time rubbing him down 
the back to his tail, at each stroke taking a 
handful of money from the end of his tail, also 
from his mouth, ears, and nose. At these 
strange proceedings the Indians stood in awed 
astonishment, and naturally were more deter- 
mined than ever not to part with so valuable an 
animal; and as soon as the juggler left, they 
took the dog down to the river-bank, and killed 
and dissected him ; but to their great chagrin 
and sorrow, they found that the wily juggler 
had taken all the money out of him. And I 
can tell you that the saloon-keeper gets all the 
money there is out of the liquor dog. There is 
none in it for the people who have to pay the 
taxes, and care for its disease and crime. 



SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. 75 

There is none in it for the poor man who 
wastes there his wages. The only man who 
makes money out of the liquor traffic is the 
man who makes the liquor and sells it. And 
in the long run, the greatest loser of all is the 
great army of laboring-men who are ruined and 
debauched by it. 

Mr. Joseph Medill, for many years one of the 
most distinguished journalists of the West, 
testified before a Congressional committee of 
labor and education to what I am sure would 
be backed up by men of careful and intelligent 
observation everywhere. He says : " I have 
rarely known a steady, sober, industrious man, 
who saved his surplus earnings and prudently 
invested them, but attained independence be- 
fore old age ; and I have never known a work- 
man, no matter what might be his wages, who 
freely indulged his appetite for liquor, that 
ever made any headway. And," continues 
Mr. Medill, "the money thus thrown away on 
liquor by the wage-workers in the last ten 
years would have provided each family with a 
home free of rent, thereby emancipating all of 
them from servitude to landlords. If invested 



j6 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

in railroad stocks and bonds during the last ten 
years, it would have transferred the ownership 
of every single mile of railway in the United 
States to the labor classes who squander their 
wages on drink. Drink is the evil progen- 
itor of the worst ills which the poor man en- 
counters, and is the chief cause of the bad 
luck which keeps him in poverty. The wage- 
classes cannot support in idleness a quarter of 
a million of saloon-keepers and their bartenders 
and families, and pay the rents of their dram- 
shops, and hope to prosper themselves." 

Strange it is that men will be so blind as to 
rob themselves and their own families of the 
comforts of life, to support another family in 
idleness and luxury ! We are told of a drink- 
ing man who related to his family one morning 
a strange dream he had had the previous night. 
In it he saw three cats — a fat one, a lean one, 
and a blind one ; and he was anxious to know 
what it all meant. His little boy answered 
quickly, " I can tell what it means. The 
fat cat is the saloon-keeper who sells you the 
drink, the lean cat is mother and me, and the 
blind cat is yourself." 



SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. J? 

A little boy in Covington, Ky., who was the 
child of a man who had recently stopped drink- 
ing and signed the pledge, said one morning, — 

"Father, are you always going to wear that 
blue ribbon ? " 

" I hope so, my dear," was the reply. 

" So do I," said the little one. 

"Why do you hope so ? " asked the father. 

" Because I have never had so many straw- 
berries in my life as I have had since you 
signed the pledge and put on that blue ribbon.' ' 

A laboring-man cannot expect to buy straw- 
berries for two families. If he supports the 
saloon-keeper, you may depend upon it his 
own family will go hungry. 

In one of our large cities a laboring-man, 
leaving a large saloon, saw a costly carriage 
and pair standing in front, occupied by two 
ladies elegantly attired, conversing with the 
proprietor. 

" Whose establishment is that ? " he said to 
the saloon-keeper as the carriage rolled away. 

" It is mine," replied the dealer proudly. 
"It cost thirty-five hundred dollars. My wife 
and daughter cannot do without it." 



78 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

The mechanic bowed his head a moment in 
deep thought ; then, looking up, said with the 
energy of a man suddenly aroused by some 
startling flash, " I see it ! I see it ! " 

" See what ? " queried the saloon-keeper. 

" See where, for years, my wages have gone. 
I helped pay for that carriage, for those horses 
and gold-mounted harnesses, and for the silks 
and laces for your family. The money that 
I have earned, that should have given my 
wife and children a home of our own, and 
good clothing, I have spent at your bar. My 
wages, and the wages of others like me, have 
gone to support you and your family in luxury. 
Hereafter my wife and children shall have the 
benefit of my wages ; and, by the help of God, 
I will never spend another dime for drink." 

No amount of legislation, and no power that 
can be obtained by trade unions or labor com- 
binations, can be of any real help to the laborer 
who spends his money in the liquor saloon. 
Dr. J. O. Peck, of blessed memory in this 
church, used to tell of a man he knew who 
crossed Chelsea Ferry to Boston one morn- 
ing, and turned into Commercial Street for his 



SALOON DEBTOR TO PAUPERIZED LABOR. 79 

usual glass. As he poured out the poison, the 
saloon-keeper's wife came in, and confidently 
asked for five hundred dollars to purchase an 
elegant shawl she had seen at the store of 
Jordan, Marsh & Co. He drew from his 
breast pocket a well-filled pocket-book, and 
counted out the money. The man outside the 
counter pushed aside his glass untouched, and 
laying down ten cents, departed in silence. 
That very morning his devoted Christian wife 
had asked him for ten dollars to buy a cloak, 
so that she might look presentable at church. 
He had crossly told her he had not the money. 
As he left the saloon he thought, " Here I 
am helping to pay for five-hundred-dollar cash- 
meres for that man's wife, but my wife asks in 
vain for a ten-dollar cloak. I can't stand this. 
I have spent my last dime for drink." When 
the next pay-day came, that meek, loving wife 
was surprised with a beautiful cloak from her 
reformed husband. She could scarcely believe 
her own eyes and ears as he laid it on the table, 
saying, " There, Emma, is a present for you. 
I have been a fool long enough. Forgive me 
for the past, and I will never touch liquor 



80 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

again." She threw her arms around his neck, 
and the hot tears told her heart-felt joy, as she 
sobbed out, " Charley, I thank you a thousand 
times. I never expected so nice a cloak. This 
seems like other days. You are so good, and 
I am so happy/ ' And when the great, strong 
fellow told Dr. Peck about it, he couldn't keep 
back the tears, and declared it was the happiest 
day he had seen in ten years. 

But I cannot stop without again calling your 
attention to the folly, the lack of business 
sense, and the wickedness of the city or state 
licensing in the midst of workingmen these 
" Banks for Losings." And every one of us 
who, by our influence or our vote, or by our 
neglect or indifference, helps to establish or 
maintain the liquor saloon in the community, 
is thus contributing to the institution which, 
more than all other institutions combined, robs 
and debauches the laborers of the land. 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AND CRIME. 8 1 



ITEM NUMBER FIVE. 

THE SALOON DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS 
AND CRIME. 

The licensed liquor saloon breeds lawlessness 
and crime by necessity, from the very condi- 
tions of its existence. It is the natural nest 
for the outlaws who resist the civilization of the 
latter days of the nineteenth century. If you 
have never been in the slum districts of Boston 
or Chicago or New York City, and I were to 
come to you and describe the horrible depravity 
of the vicious elements that control those sec- 
tions, were to tell you of the vice and crime, 
the debauchery and lewdness, that reign there, 
and then were to propose to draw a diagram of 
the streets that run through those awful sec- 
tions, and describe the business that was car- 
ried on there by saying to you that on the first 
corner was a Baptist Church, and that from 
there on down to the next corner the street 
was blocked solidly with dry-goods houses, and 



82 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

at the foot of that street there was a Methodist 
Church located, and across on the other side 
of the street there were other stores of good 
character, and in the middle of the block a 
Presbyterian Church, and were to go on de- 
scribing the whole section of the city as filled 
with schools, reputable business houses, and 
churches, it would be impossible for you to be- 
lieve my statement that the debauchery and 
crime which I had before indicated could exist 
in relation to these other things. And if I 
were to ask you what kind of business you 
would expect to be carried on in such a slum 
district, you would answer without a moment's 
hesitation, if you were honest, "Liquor saloons 
and their children — gambling-hells and broth- 
els ; " and that is exactly what you will find in 
every slum district of every city in the world. 

Some of you remember very well when what 
is known as Five Points in New York City was 
perhaps the nearest like perdition of any place 
on the American continent. And when the 
newspapers of the city turned the attention of 
the public to the outrageous outlawry which 
existed there, they found that the center of 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AND CRIME. 83 

Five Points and all its diabolism was an old 
brewery, and that every street running out from 
it was lined with liquor saloons. And when the 
Christian element of the city undertook to ele- 
vate Five Points, and clean it up, the very first 
thing they did was to buy the old brewery, and 
change it into a city mission. 

A number of years ago I happened to be up 
in the Calapooya Mountains in Southern Ore- 
gon. I was staying at the house of an old 
farmer, who, desiring to show me the courtesies 
of the region, asked me if I would like to see 
some deer-hunting. And it did not take me 
long to say yes. He called his eldest boy, 
Abner, and sent him, with three or four hounds, 
across the pastures, into the great forest a 
mile and a half away ; while we, each taking 
a gun, went in almost the opposite direction. 
After we had climbed a long hill through the 
timber, we came to a slight opening ; and the 
old man said, " Whenever the hounds start up 
a deer over in that forest where Abner went, 
he always makes a circuit around over that hill 
yonder, crosses the creek away to the right, 
and coming up through this opening, runs be- 



84 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

tween that great spruce-tree and that old snag 
there that has been struck by lightning." We 
waited ; and soon we heard the deep baying of 
the hounds, — at first faint in the distance, but 
rapidly drawing nearer, — and before we had 
been lying in ambush twenty minutes, a great 
buck with wide-spreading antlers leaped out of 
the brush, and stood directly between that old 
snag and the big spruce-tree, and lost his life in 
the determination to follow through the woods 
the beaten trail to which he was accustomed. 
Now, then, criminals have their runways the 
same as other animals. And if a man were to 
commit a brutal crime in Brooklyn or New 
York to-night, and then leave for Chicago, the 
police would get a description of the man, and 
telegraph the chief of police there to arrest 
him. When he gets to know the kind of man 
he has to deal with, — that he is a vicious man, 
capable of the most brutal crimes, an old jail- 
bird, and a natural associate of criminals, — 
what sort of places in the city of Chicago would 
the chief of police have watched in hope of 
finding his game ? Do you think he would 
order a close watch on all the prayer-meetings ? 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AND CRIME. 85 

Would he send his best detectives to the art 
galleries and the public libraries ? No, indeed ; 
you know very well they would go to the sa- 
loons and the institutions that are born of the 
saloons — the brothels and gambling-hells ; be- 
cause that kind of game always seeks such 
runways for their familiar ground. 

The fact is, that the liquor saloon is at heart 
an outlaw. The only effective way to deal with 
it is to take it for what it is, a criminal, and 
deal with it as a criminal. When you can tame 
a gambling-hell, and make it a safe resort for 
young men ; when the Ethiopian can change 
his skin, and the leopard his spots, — then you 
may hope to draw the teeth of a liquor saloon. 
Nothing but the hard fist of the Ten Command- 
ments, with the police power of the city and 
State and nation behind it, can deal with such 
an institution. The Chicago Inter-Ocean says : 
" The saloon element is not amenable to ethical 
eloquence, or the logic of reason ; the remedy 
lies in taking the offender by the scruff of the 
neck and the slack of the trowsers, meta- 
phorically speaking, and throwing him into 
court." 



86 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

Other countries as well as our own are com- 
ing to understand the serious danger from the 
spread of alcoholism. La Petit Journal of 
Paris, a newspaper which has the largest cir- 
culation of any paper in the world, made the 
assertion in a double-leaded editorial, that "of 
all the dangers menacing our agricultural popu- 
lation at the present day, the gravest and most 
difficult to fight is alcoholism." The Tageblatt y 
of Leipsic, also says : " It will not be possible 
to produce any law adapted to really put a stop 
to the evil of drunkenness without relinquishing 
some of our popular national conceptions about 
interference with individual liberty." The Ger- 
man saloon-keepers of this country, that have 
had so much to say about prohibitory laws in- 
terfering with personal liberty, ought to listen 
to this cry from home. 

One of the most dangerous features of our 
modern civilization is that the saloon strikes at 
the very existence of law and order in our large 
cities. Here is an actual occurrence in the city 
of Chicago within less than two years. A sa- 
loon-keeper in that city plied with intoxicants a 
young girl of previous good character, and then 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AND CRLME. 87 

brutally outraged her. He was arrested under 
the grossly inadequate statute which punishes 
the sale of intoxicants to minors. I would not 
be afraid to offer a hundred dollars to any one 
in this large audience who could in a hundred 
trials guess the quibble upon which the police 
justice, who was the tool of the liquor saloons, 
released this criminal scoundrel, for whom hang- 
ing would have been too good. This was his 
august decision : " There is only one minor in 
this case," said this judicial scoundrel, " while 
the law says minors. " According to his inter- 
pretation of the law, the criminal must drug 
two young girls at one time before he could be 
held to be guilty of an offense against the law. 
And yet so great was the power of the liquor 
traffic in the city of Chicago, that, although the 
matter was publicly commented upon by the 
press, he continued to disgrace the court of 
justice, as Paddy Divver continues to do in 
New York City to-day. 

Come down to Cincinnati. One Monday 
morning a woman stood in the police court, 
and by her side stood two stalwart policemen. 
The charge which the clerk read against her 



88 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

was disorderly conduct on the street and dis- 
turbing the peace. 

"Who are the witnesses against this wo- 
man ? " asked the judge ; and the two police- 
men stepped forward to be sworn. 

" Now tell the story," said the judge, and 
one of them began : — 

" I arrested the woman in front of a saloon 
on Broadway on Saturday night. She had 
raised a great disturbance, was fighting and 
brawling with men in the saloon, and the sa- 
loon-keeper put her out. She used the foulest 
language, and with an awful threat struck at 
the keeper with all her force. * I then arrested 
her, and took her to the detention house, and 
locked her up." 

" The next witness will take the stand," said 
the judge. And then the second policeman 
stepped up and corroborated his fellow. 

"Call the saloon-keeper." 

" What do you know of the case ? " 

" I know dis vomans vas making disturbance 
by my saloon. She comes and she makes trou- 
bles, und she fights mit me, und I put her de 
door oud. I know her all along. She vas pad 
vomans." 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AND CRIME. $9 

Turning to the trembling woman, the judge 
said, — 

" This is a pjetty clear case, madam ; have 
you anything to say in your defense ? " 

" Yes, judge," she answered in a strangely 
calm though trembling voice. " I am not guilty 
of the charge, and these men standing before 
you have perjured their souls to prevent me 
from telling the truth. It was they, not I, who 
violated the law. I was in the saloon last Sat- 
urday night, and I'll tell you how it happened. 
My husband did not come home from work that 
evening, and I feared he had gone to a saloon. 
I knew he must have drawn his week's wages, 
and we needed it all so badly. I put the little 
ones to bed, and then waited all alone through 
the weary hours until after the city clocks struck 
twelve. Then, I thought, the saloons will be 
closed, and he will be put out on the street. 
Probably he will not be able to get home, and 
the police will arrest him and lock him up. I 
must go and find him, and bring him home. 
I wrapped a shawl around me and started out, 
leaving the little ones asleep in bed ; and, Judge, 
I have not seen them since." 



go THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

Here the tears came to her eyes, and she 
almost broke down ; but, restraining herself, 
she went on, — 

" I went to the saloon where I thought most 
likely he would be. It was about twenty min- 
utes after twelve ; but the saloon, that man's 
saloon " — pointing to the saloon-keeper, who 
now seemed to want to crouch out of sight — 
"was still open, and my husband and these 
two policemen" — pointing to those who had 
so lately sworn against her — "were standing 
at the bar, drinking together. I stepped up to 
my husband, and asked him to go home with 
me ; but the men laughed at him, and the 
saloon-keeper ordered me out. I said, ' No ; I 
want my husband to go with me/ Then 
I tried to tell him how badly we needed the 
money he was spending ; and then the saloon- 
keeper cursed me, and told me to leave. Then, 
I confess, I could stand no more, and I said, 
' You ought to be prosecuted for violating the 
midnight closing law/ At this the saloon- 
keeper and policemen rushed upon me, and 
put me into the street ; and one of the police- 
men, grasping my arm like a vice, hissed in my 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AXD CRIME. 9 1 

ear, * I '11 get you a thirty days' sentence in the 
workhouse, and then we'll see what you think 
about suing people.' He called a patrol wagon, 
pushed me in, and drove to the jail ; and, Judge, 
you know the rest. All day yesterday I was 
locked up, my children at home alone, with no 
fire, no food, no mother." 

Her story was so manifestly true, that that 
judge did have the honor to dismiss this 
woman ; but the liquor traffic had such power 
in the city of Cincinnati, that this perjured 
scoundrel of a saloon-keeper and these lawless 
policemen were never prosecuted, and the 
policemen were not even laid off for a day. 
This case is a matter of record in the Cincin- 
nati court. 

But why enumerate the cases ? There is not 
a city in this land which the liquor traffic does 
not disgrace by its lawlessness and crime. 

The liquor traffic is the only business under 
heaven bad enough to be accused of corrupting 
such a police force as the recent investigation 
shows has been governing the city of New 
York. From the days of the whisky rebel- 
lion in South Carolina, down to the shameless 



92 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

defiance of the excise laws of the city of 
Brooklyn, it has been and is a lawless institu- 
tion. There is scarcely a green mountain in 
all the South that has not been reddened with 
the blood of United States officers who have 
been slain by its emissaries. So lawless is the 
liquor traffic, that when, after the hanging of 
the anarchists in Chicago, the press reports 
carried the news over the country that a num- 
ber of Sunday-schools had been established in 
that city in which the principles of anarchy and 
hatred of American institutions were taught, 
nobody was astonished, or questioned the addi- 
tional statement that every one of these schools 
of anarchy was held either in a liquor saloon or 
a room leading out of a bar-room. 

It is the commonplace of the census reports 
and the every-day statistics of crime to tell you 
that more than three-fourths of all the crime 
which curses the land is born and bred in the 
liquor saloon. 

Strange it is, indeed, how silent Christian 
men and women can be on a subject of such 
mammoth importance ! I have heard the story 
of the father of a family, who was accustomed 



DEBTOR TO LAWLESSNESS AND CRIME. 93 

to ask a blessing on the family meal when there 
was only his own household present ; but when 
there was company at the table he did not have 
the courage to do it, and omitted the invoca- 
tion. One day when he did this, his little 
daughter stopped him in carving w r ith the in- 
quiry, " Say, papa, ain't you going to make 
that funny little noise in your throat?" It is 
the shame of our time that there are so many 
Christian people, so many men of ability and 
power and influence, who see all the iniquity 
of the saloon, who behold its ravages, who are 
burdened with taxes to support its disease and 
crime, and yet dare not make even " a funny 
little noise in their throats " in the presence 
of this infernal traffic. 



94 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 



ITEM NUMBER SIX. 

THE SALOON DEBTOR TO POLITICAL 
CORRUPTION. 

In a country governed like ours, every ques- 
tion, first or last, which is of serious interest to 
human life, comes to be a political question. 
You cannot confine the saloon question to the 
region of moral suasion, whether in the home, 
the Sunday-school, or the church. We have 
been seeing from night to night, in this series 
of conferences which we have had, that every 
species of vice, degradation, and crime grows 
out of the saloon. It is impossible to make 
all these crimes the subject of political con- 
sideration and punishment, and leave the very 
mother of crimes outside the realm of politics. 

The saloon has invaded politics on its own 
account. It stuffs the ballot-box, elects its 
tools to office by bribery, buys legislatures, 
and in every way tarnishes the fair name of 
American political life. We base the right of 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 95 

the political destruction of the liquor traffic on 
the bed-rock truth that the government has a 
right to defend its own life. To use an illus- 
tration once used by John B. Finch : Suppose 
a man comes here with a club to kill me. 
Under the laws of this country I would be 
compelled to retire as far as I could with 
safety ; but when the issue is between his 
life and my life, he must die ; because every 
man has the right to defend himself. I am 
a man ; and, so long as I obey the law, I have 
a right to be a man. I exist ; and, until I for- 
feit that right by my own actions, I have a 
right to exist. This is the foundation of social 
and political ethics. 

A story is told of a muscular preacher who 
was a sort of Peter Cartwright species of di- 
vine, and used all the powers the Lord had 
given him — fists as well as tongue. Some of 
the good sisters in his church thought he was 
too much inclined to use his fists, so they sent 
him this text : " If a man smite thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also." They 
thought they would puzzle the old man to har- 
monize the text and his conduct. He said he 



96 THE SALOON-KEEPER 'S LEDGER. 

would preach from it the next Sabbath, and he 
did. He opened with the usual services, took 
his text, and went ahead. He went on to say- 
that the Bible was distinguished from all other 
books by appealing to the God-man, and not 
to the brute-man. He continued, " If a man 
should strike you on the right cheek, he might 
do it through mistake, or might do it through a 
feeling of mischief ; and if you turned around 
without asking any questions and struck him 
back, that would be acting like a brute. You 
should keep still, and turn the other cheek. If 
he strikes you on that, you know that he meant 
it ; then go for him." 

That may not be a very good Bible interpre- 
tation ; but I agree with Finch that it is a good 
interpretation of the law of this country, the 
law that is inherent in every individual — the 
right of self-defense. The government has a 
right to defend its own life. If war were to 
break out to-morrow, and the emergency should 
demand it, it would have a right to draft me 
from this pulpit, the lawyer from his clients, 
the physician from his practice, and every bus- 
iness-man here away from his business, put its 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 97 

uniform on our backs, and guns on our shoul- 
ders, and send us out to fight for the life of the 
country. The government has a right to de- 
stroy any business that threatens the life of the 
country, or that debauches the character of its 
citizens. The Supreme Court of the United 
States has decided this again and again ; and 
finally, with reference to the liquor traffic, in 
these very words : " The government has the 
right, through its police power, to protect its 
own life." 

This whole question, then, is rightfully a po- 
litical question. Now, I know I am not telling 
you anything new when I say that the saloon 
thrusts its filthy hand into politics on every 
possible occasion. The saloon never touches 
politics except to defile and corrupt. Just at 
this time we are having an immense amount of 
discussion from the pulpit, in mass meetings, in 
legislatures, and, above all, in the great news- 
papers and magazines, about municipal reform. 
But I thoroughly agree with a Western editor 
who says that there cannot be any permanent 
municipal reform in this country so long as 
America tolerates the saloon. Men who know 



98 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

how political campaigns in municipal affairs are 
managed will not accept a nomination many 
times, because they know that by common cus- 
tom it makes them the helpless prey of every 
beer-slinger in the city. It has often befallen 
candidates for high judicial honors — men with- 
out a stain upon their names or a vice of which 
they could be accused, and men, even, who were 
running on so-called reform tickets — that they 
have been led about from bar to bar like a fat 
ox, that they might win the vote of the slums 
by free beer. Nothing so speaks to us the 
degradation of politics as this. In most of 
our cities the Sabbaths before a municipal 
election are simply pandemonium let loose. 
The bartender poses as the dictator of Amer- 
ican destiny. There is no candidate of a po- 
litical party too lordly to do him obeisance. 
Between the great rival parties he consciously 
holds the balance of power. His royal scepter is 
a beer faucet. A barkeeper in Richmond, Va., 
hearing some talk of a reform movement in 
municipal politics, laughed it to scorn with 
these words : " Any bar-room in Richmond is 
a bigger man in politics than all the churches 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 99 

in Richmond put together." Shut up the 
saloons, and municipal politics would reform 
themselves. Chauncey M. Depew is frank 
enough and brave enough to say that he has 
no doubt that Tammany Hall will very soon 
be in control of New York City again, and will 
probably continue to govern it during the pres- 
ent generation. And yet such an unspeakably 
rotten machine would have absolutely no chance 
to govern New York City if it were not for the 
corruption of politics through the liquor traffic. 
So long as the saloon door stands ajar at every 
corner of the street, the affairs of cities will . 
probably be managed by the men who are 
not above purchasing the privilege from the 
breweries. 

Before the recent upheaval in New York 
City, the New York Herald, in an editorial pro- 
testing against the rum-besotted misrule of that 
city, said : " We must no longer be ruled by 
graduates of the Tombs and nurslings of the 
grog-shop." But how useless it is to cry out 
against harvesting the crop we have deliberately 
planted and nourished. A city will and must 
be governed by the graduates of its own institu- 



IOO THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

tions. If it establishes and maintains two hun- 
dred grog-shops to one high school, it cannot 
complain that more graduates from the former 
than the latter come into mastery. 

The trouble in our politics has been in the 
past, and is to-day, that the saloon has laid its 
corrupting hand upon every party that has 
shown indications of probable supremacy in 
the near future. 

Dr. Cuyler well said the other evening, and Dr. 
Dixon repeated the same sentiment last night, 
that there is absolutely nothing under present 
conditions to expect from either of the leading 
political parties in the way of opposition legis- 
lation to the liquor traffic. As Dr. Cuyler said, 
we have had a Democratic legislature in Albany, 
and obtained no reform legislation against the 
liquor traffic from it ; and now that we have a 
Republican legislature, we not only do not ex- 
pect anything from it as against the saloon, but 
are compelled to work tooth and nail to keep 
them from repealing the Sunday law, and doing 
for us a great deal worse than their Democratic 
predecessors. One who has studied the history 
of the two parties in various sections of the 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 101 

country for the last few years, says that you 
will find it hard to decide which should bear 
the palm for truckling subserviency to the li- 
quor traffic. Looking at the two, one is irresis- 
tibly reminded of the dialogue between two 
young students of the Westminster Catechism. 

" Joe, how fur have you got ? " 

" I'm right in the middle of original sin," an- 
swers Joe. 

" Oh, I'm furdern that ! " says Jack ; " I'm 
beyond redemption/' 

Now, I do not intend to discuss party politics 
to-night in any offensive way, or to urge upon 
your attention any political party ; but it is cer- 
tainly within the province of the present dis- 
cussion to emphasize what you must all admit 
to be a fact — that the liquor traffic, with its 
licensed saloon system, holds such a grip upon 
each one of the three leading political parties ( if 
it shall be true that the Populist party shall con- 
tinue to have a leading influence ) as to utterly 
palsy them in both hand and lip on the line of 
anything that means really serious hurt to the 
saloon. They talk pleasant platitudes now and 
again in resolutions and platforms ; but they 



102 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

never say to us — and the filthy hand of the 
liquor traffic holds them so tightly by the 
scruff of the neck that they cannot say to us — 
that if we will help them into power they will 
put the hoof of that power on the head of the 
liquor traffic. If you go through the South, 
you will find that in all those States the great 
body of temperance men, the men who believe 
in righteousness in law and conduct, are in the 
Democratic party. No man who has ever lived 
in the South, or traveled there with a carefully 
observant eye, will deny this fact. The public- 
spirited citizens, the men of wealth, of education, 
of moral character, the men who hate the saloon, 
and would like to see it dead, are, in an over- 
whelming majority, members of the Democratic 
party. Take, for instance, the whole Methodist 
Episcopal Church South — fully as strong there 
in proportion to the population as is the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church in the North — the 
church that believes in the prohibition of the 
liquor traffic as thoroughly as we do ; and that 
entire prohibition church, with its enormous 
membership, from the bishops to the last lay- 
man who has come in, is in the Democratic 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 103 

party. But while this is the fact, there is also a 
large contingent of the Democratic party in the 
South that is interested in the manufacture and 
sale of intoxicating liquors, and the saloon holds 
its grip on the party to such an extent that it 
is always able to thwart prohibition and turn its 
legislation into license. If we come into the 
Northern States, where most of you are better 
acquainted, and contrast these two parties with 
reference to the liquor traffic ( and I am not 
comparing them in any other relation to-night ), 
we find here just the reverse of what we do in 
the South. The Republican party is undoubt- 
edly, as compared with the Democratic party, 
the temperance party. That is, it has in its 
membership an overwhelming majority of the 
public-spirited citizens of the community who 
are opposed to the liquor traffic, who hate it and 
abhor it, and would rejoice exceedingly to see it 
stamped out of existence. And yet, in the 
North as in the South, we get license instead 
of prohibition in most cases, when it comes to 
legislation ; and the leading newspapers of na- 
tional reputation in the party have declared un- 
equivocally that prohibition must be prohibited 



I04 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

within the Republican party. The same trouble 
exists here as in the South — that while the 
great majority of temperance men are in the 
Republican party here, as they are in the Dem- 
ocratic party there, there is a large contingent 
in the Republican party throughout the North- 
ern States that is interested in the manufacture 
and sale of intoxicating drinks. And so again 
the dirty hand of the liquor saloon grips party 
conventions and legislatures by the throat, and 
turns legislation into license instead of prohibi- 
tion. 

It reminds me of a dime museum advertise- 
ment which I used to see on the fences over in 
Massachusetts, which declared that there was 
in one of the museums of Boston a two-headed 
man. The advertisement, which probably lied, 
said that the man had two well-formed heads 
and two necks, but that the necks ran down 
into one stomach, so that he had only one pair 
of arms, and one pair of legs. When he ate 
and drank, talked and sang, or when he prayed 
or cursed, he was two men ; but when it came 
to digesting his food, or to going about, he was 
only one man. He could be two men while he 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 105 

was sitting still talking ; but when he got up to 
go and accomplish anything, there was only one 
pair of legs that carried off the whole mena- 
gerie. 

Now I say, with all due respect to the great 
poiitical parties — and every man should treat 
great combinations of his fellow-men with re- 
spect — that the condition of the Democratic 
party in the South, and the condition of the 
Republican party in the North, seem to me to 
be aptly illustrated by that figure. Taking the 
Republican party in this State at the present 
time as a sample — only because it is nearest 
to us ; for the Democratic party in Georgia 
would serve the purpose just as well — is it not 
true that it has two definitely formed, distinc- 
tive heads so far as its attitude to the liquor 
traffic is concerned ? One of those heads is a 
temperance head. It is a beautiful head. Per- 
haps you remember a picture that two or three 
years ago was in the Review of Reviews. It 
was called the composite photograph of Glad- 
stoned cabinet. In some way the photographer 
manages to so arrange a number of photographs 
that he gets the distinctive features out of all 



106 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

the faces, and the result is a composite, or 
average photograph of all of them. Well, now, 
this temperance head of the Republican party 
is a composite photograph of all the nice and 
good men there are in it — bishops (Protestant 
and Catholic, Methodist and Protestant Episco- 
palian), doctors in divinity, editors, college 
presidents, elders and deacons, class-leaders 
and stewards. Many of my dearest friends, the 
people for whom I have the greatest respect 
and regard, help to make up the composite 
photograph of this beautiful temperance head 
in the Republican party. At the same time 
there is another head. And no matter how de- 
voted a man may be to his party, he must ad- 
mit this. There is a plainly defined whisky 
head to the Republican party. It is a horrible- 
looking head. To make up this composite pic- 
ture you must let brewers and distillers, retail 
saloon-keepers, bloated drunkards, race-track 
gamblers, prize-fighters, bullies, and thugs of 
every conceivable stage and grade of brutality 
and viciousness, sit for their picture ; and the 
result is the whisky head of the Republican 
party. The two heads run down through their 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. I07 

necks into one stomach, whose greatest interest 
is party supremacy. During the greater part 
of the year the two heads talk and act very 
differently. The temperance head preaches 
sermons, sings hymns and psalms, prays 
prayers, utters temperance resolutions, talks 
prohibition and eternal opposition to the saloon. 
All this time the whisky head edits liquor 
organs, curses the temperance fanatics, drinks 
unlimited quantities of beer and bourbon, and 
swears eternal allegiance to the traffic. But 
the curious fact about it all is, that there is only 
one digestive apparatus and one pair of legs to 
this queer monstrosity ; and whenever it starts 
up to do anything in the city council, or in the 
legislature, the two big license legs carry off 
both heads into the saloon camp. One may 
pray and protest, the other may curse and shout 
victory, but both of them go. And the result 
reminds me of a little doggerel epitaph, which 
it is said may still be descried on the tomb- 
stone that marks the resting-place of a deceased 
maiden over on the New England coast, — 

" She had two bad legs and a badish cough, 
But 'twas her bad legs that carried her off." 



108 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

It is the bad license legs of these political 
parties that carry them off every time. 

What is needed above everything else is 
that the men who love their country more than 
they do the spoils of office shall come out of all 
these parties, and arraying themselves together 
upon some broad platform for righteousness, 
smite the liquor saloon to its death. I do not 
say it shall be the Prohibition party. All the 
intelligent prohibitionists that I know anything 
about are willing to meet their brother haters 
of the saloon on any common ground, under 
any name, so that it means death to the liquor 
traffic. 

Why cannot this be done ? The legalized 
traffic in intoxicating liquors is the bitterest 
curse physically, intellectually, socially, politi- 
cally, or morally, that has ever smitten with 
shame the fair face of the Republic ! Com- 
pared with the crime, poverty, and suffering 
caused by the drink traffic, the silver question 
and the tariff question lumped together are a 
contemptible bagatelle. And yet, despite the 
universally admitted magnitude of this giant 
evil, there appears to be a wicked conspiracy of 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 109 

silence on this subject among the leaders of the 
great political parties. East and West, North 
and South, earnest, God-fearing men, year after 
year, beg at party conventions for some ade- 
quate recognition of the evil, and some honest 
threat of hostility to the liquor traffic. And 
they are treated with insolence and contempt, 
while the saloon-keeper is flattered and fawned 
upon with disgusting humility. 

The deadly lethargy which hangs over Chris- 
tian circles calls for outspoken leadership on 
the part of all Christian ministers if the slug- 
gish hosts of righteousness are to be roused to 
action. 

Modern civilization has no more pitiable sight 
than is revealed when brewer and Catholic priest, 
distiller and Protestant clergyman, saloon-keeper 
and Sunday-school superintendent, bartender and 
class-leader, stand shoulder to shoulder, voting 
twin ballots, and obsequiously supporting the 
party policy which sustains this conspiracy of 
silence concerning the hideous cancer which is 
eating out the very heart of our institutions. 
We cannot shut our eyes nor close our ears to 
the unspeakable sorrows of our brothers and 



IIO THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

sisters around us. Ravished homes, staggering 
drunkards, broken-hearted wives, pitiful orphans, 
meet us every day, and appeal to us on every 
street. 

We Christians are set in the midst of this 
misery, as disciples of the Nazarene, to do what 
we can to steady these staggering feet, heal 
these broken hearts, and awaken to hope these 
despairing souls. But at every effort we make 
we are confronted in fiendish antagonism by the 
liquor traffic, which the State itself protects, and 
from which it receives money — money with as 
damnable a smirch upon it as any that ever Judas 
handled. For every church in Brooklyn, Catholic 
or Protestant, there are multiplied saloons backed 
by the city and State and national governments, 
and protected by the police. 

What is there left to us, Christian brothers, 
when confronted with facts like these, but to 
make our protest so loud, so dangerous, and so 
effective, that it cannot pass unheeded ? I feel 
compelled to say that I am profoundly convinced 
that just so long as Christian ministers and lay- 
men continue to pray, and pass resolutions, and 
preach sermons, and sign petitions, like prohibi- 



DEBTOR TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION. Ill 

tionists, but continue to vote like saloon-keepers, 
just so long will they be treated with the prac- 
tical contempt they deserve by all political 
parties. 



112 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 



HOW TO SETTLE THE SALOON 
ACCOUNT. 

In our six previous conferences we have dis- 
cussed the several items in the account which 
society holds against the liquor traffic. We 
have found that the saloon as an institution is a 
prolific cause of disease, and an enemy to the 
health of the people. We have found also that 
it excites and inflames the brutal lusts and 
passions, and honeycombs the community with 
social and private immorality. We have taken 
note of the fact that it is the most deadly enemy 
of the home ; that no home is so sacred or pure, 
or hedged about with such protective influence, 
as to be sure that it may not be invaded by this 
ruthless foe. We have seen that the laboring- 
man has no enemy so tyrannical or so pitiless 
as the liquor traffic ; that no legislation nor any 
change of sociological conditions can be of any 
permanent benefit to the laboring-classes of the 
world so long as $900,000,000 a year are wasted 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT I I 3 

in intoxicating drinks. We have found that the 
saloon is the hotbed of lawlessness and crime ; 
that it is the natural school of anarchy ; that 
out from its doors go directly the influences 
which cause the ruin of three-fourths and more 
of all those who in jails and penitentiaries and 
reformatories are suffering for their misdeeds. 
We have gone into the realm of political life, 
and have seen there the same corrupting and 
disastrous influence — that the saloon is the 
caucus hall for everything that is vile and dis- 
honest and shameful in our politics. Thus we 
have gone around the circle of physical, intel- 
lectual, social, domestic, economic, and political 
life, and everywhere we have found that the 
saloon is a heavy debtor to humanity. It blesses 
nowhere ; it curses everywhere. 

We have drawn these six indictments against 
the saloon ; and, alas ! how many more might 
have been drawn. The New York Tribune 
said some time ago, in an editorial article on 
the liquor traffic : — 

"It is impossible to examine any subject 
connected with the progress, the civilization, 
the physical well-being, the religious condi- 



114 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

tion of the masses, without encountering 
this monstrous evil. It lies at the center of 
all political and social mischief. It paralyzes 
energies in every direction. It neutralizes 
educational agencies. It silences the voice 
of religion. It baffles penal reform. It ob- 
structs political reform. There is needed 
something of that sacred fire which kindled 
into inextinguishable heat the zeal of the 
abolitionists and compelled the abandonment 
of human slavery, to rouse the national indig- 
nation and abhorrence against this very much 
greater evil." 

No license system has ever had any perma- 
nent or practical effect in diminishing the woes 
of the saloon. License has been tried in almost 
every form that could be imagined, high and 
low, for more than a hundred years, and it 
has never lessened either drunkenness or the 
amount of liquor sold. We have just seen a 
great fight in this city, led by good Christian 
men and women, to secure the refusal of a 
license for a saloon near the entrance to the 
Brooklyn Bridge. I am glad they succeeded, 
and congratulate them on their courage and 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT. 1 1 5 

their triumph. And yet I cannot but feel, and 
they cannot but feel, that, after all, it was an 
empty victory. If there were no other saloons 
in all that region, then it would be a victory 
worth winning ; but all about there, on almost 
every corner, are other gaping liquor hells, that 
go on day and night, week-day and Sunday. 
Anybody that wants liquor down there has it 
just the same, and it may be doubted whether 
there is any less liquor sold because one saloon 
more or less is planted in the midst of such a 
group of dens of iniquity. 

We have been passing, during the last few 
years, through a fad of high license, compared 
with that which is low. And I am sure that 
the most that can be said about it anywhere 
is what the polite and considerate serving-man 
said to his master, who, in hunting, had fired 
into a flock of game and hit none of them, 
"Well, sir, you've made 'em shift their places. ,, 
High license may make whisky barrels "shift 
their places," but it has never diminished them. 

The master's failing to hit his game reminds 
me of a story they tell over in New England ; 
how up in the old post-office at North Andover 



Il6 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

a group of men were sitting around the stove 
one morning, gossiping about neighborhood 
affairs, when a new-comer suddenly burst open 
the door, and exclaimed, — 

" Say ! heard the news ? Old Deacon Pet- 
tingill's barn is all burned up." 

" You do tell ! you do tell ! " 

" Yes ; and not only his barn, but all his hay, 
and his wagons and his cattle — the whole 
thing is burned up." 

" My ! My ! " says one. " Why, it will break 
poor old Deacon Pettingill all up. Say, 'Zekiel, 
you haven't told us how it happened." 

" Well, you see there was a man coming 
down the road with a gun on his shoulder, a 
shotgun, and he got along opposite old Deacon 
Pettingill's barn, and he saw a big owl a-sitting 
right on the peak of the barn, and, like a fool, 
he just up and fired away, and the waddin' 
caught fire in the hay, and jist burned up the 
whole affair." 

Again there were exclamations of execration 
on the folly of the man with the gun, and a 
great deal of sympathy expressed for old Dea- 
con Pettingill in his great loss. There was one 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT WJ 

old fellow, however, a typical old Yankee, who 
would make a good picture of Uncle Sam, 
who hadn't been saying anything, but during 
the excitement had been occasionally practising 
at squirting the tobacco juice through his teeth 
at a certain little broken corner of the stove 
door. As the excitement began to subside, he 
sent a good shot through the stove-door, and, 
looking up at the new-comer with a knowing 
wink, said composedly, "I say, 'Zekiel, did he 
hit the owl ? " 

All our talk and our license systems amount 
to nothing unless they hit the owl of the liquor 
traffic. And the truth is that no license sys- 
tem that has ever been invented has done that. 
The statute books of all civilized nations are 
lumbered up with license laws, and have been 
for many years, and yet the drunkards reel 
through the streets of all their cities, and the 
victims of the saloon lie in all our hospitals. 
This train of disease and misery springs out 
of the license system itself, and it will never 
die out until the system is abolished. If the 
whole brood of drunkard-makers were to be 
drowned in the Atlantic Ocean to-morrow, and 



I 1 8 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

the whole army of suffering victims were to 
find rest in the grave, the sharks would not 
have time to pick the bones of the one, or the 
grass to carpet the graves of the other, before 
another brood of drunkard-makers would spring 
up, and another army of tipplers gather about 
their dens, unless you should destroy the ac- 
cursed license system which produced them. 

But high license, you cry. What difference 
does the size of the license make in the case? 
Do you suppose the brandy that makes a man's 
heart beat thirteen times a minute faster than 
it ought under low license, will only make it 
beat five times too often under high license ? 
Do you suppose the bourbon whisky that, un- 
der a license fee of a hundred dollars, eats 
holes in a man's throat and stomach, and makes 
him from lips to stomach one raw, burning sore, 
will become mild and healing if the tax be 
raised to a thousand dollars? Will the beer 
that clogs a man's liver and rots his kidneys 
when drunk over a pine table in a saloon that 
pays fifty dollars a quarter suddenly become 
healthful when poured from a silver pitcher 
over a marble table in a saloon which pays 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT I 19 

three hundred dollars a quarter? Will the 
drunken brute beat his wife and kick his chil- 
dren the more gently when made drunk under 
high license than he would under low license ? 
Out on all such nonsense ! The stronger and 
the more elaborate your license system may be, 
the more thoroughly it intrenches the saloon 
as a disease and crime scattering center in the 
community. 

The utter folly of supposing that any kind 
of license system can stay the ravages of the 
liquor traffic, or heal the wounds it makes upon 
society, is clearly seen whenever you apply it 
to an individual case, and think how horrible 
it would seem to you if a man were to offer 
you so many dollars for the opportunity to ruin 
your boy under any other circumstances. One 
can easily imagine a dialogue like this : — 

The father and mother are sitting together 
by the fireside at night. The mother says, 
" Our boy is getting to be out late at night." 

The father replies, " Well, we must tax the 
saloon fifty dollars." 

A little later there is another scene, and the 
mother says, " Husband, I believe John drinks." 



120 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

And the father replies, "We must put up 
that tax to one hundred dollars." 

A year passes by, and they are sitting to- 
gether again. The mother's face looks very 
sad and anxious ; and we hear her saying, " My 
dear husband, our boy is being ruined." 

"Well," says the father, "we must try the 
license a while at two hundred dollars." 

Only a few months pass now, when the 
heart-broken mother meets the father at the 
door, and exclaims, " Oh, my God ! my boy 
came home drunk." 

" Well, well ! we must make it three hundred 
dollars." 

Time passes again. The father has been 
away on a journey, and comes home. The 
poor, faded mother meets him, and says, " Just 
think, William, our boy is in jail ! " 

The father begins to get mad now, and cries 
out in impatience, "I'll fix those saloons! Tax . 
'em four hundred dollars ! " 

Still later they meet, and the mother wails, 
" My poor child is a confirmed drunkard!" 

And the father replies, " Up with that tax ! 
Make it five hundred dollars ! " 



NOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT 121 

Still later I hear the mother saying, " Our 
once noble boy is a wreck." 

And the father says, " Now I will stop them ; 
make it six hundred dollars." 

It is only a little later. There is black and 
white crape on the door. The hearse stands in 
front, and up-stairs the poor, broken-hearted 
mother cries, " Alas ! alas ! we carry our poor 
boy to a drunkard's grave to-day." 

" Ah," says the father, " I was too lenient. 
We must regulate this traffic ; we ought to 
have made that tax one thousand dollars." 

You say that dialogue is absurd. Is it more 
so than our method of dealing with this murder- 
making saloon ? This whole thought of license 
is not only absurd, but it is abominably wicked. 
Even the queen of Madagascar rebuked the 
United States by replying to those who pro- 
posed that she should receive a revenue from 
strong drink : " I cannot consent as your queen 
to take revenue from that which destroys the 
souls and bodies of my subjects." License 
fees are the price of blood. If Judas had 
received three hundred pieces of silver instead 
of thirty for the betrayal of Christ, it would 



122 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

not have made the transaction any the less 
infamous. 

Nothing but absolute prohibition touches the 
people's hurt from the liquor traffic. To use 
another illustration from that inimitable prohi- 
bition orator, John B. Finch : Suppose you 
should go home to-night, and when you get 
there, you find your boy on the bed. He has 
been indisposed for several days, and you see 
that he is sick. You put your hand on his 
head — it is burning hot; you put your finger 
on his pulse, and find it running above a hun- 
dred. You speak to him. He answers in 
broken sentences. You at once send for a 
physician. When he comes, you ask, — 
" What is the matter with Willie ? " 
The physician makes an examination of the 
boy's body, asks how he has been feeling for 
the past few days, and tells you that Willie has 
the fever. He says, "The child has taken, 
through the nose and lungs, malarial poison. 
The fever and the increase of pulse are simply 
nature's effort to expel the poison and save the 
child's life. This increased activity of the vital 
forces is simply nature defending herself against 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT 1 23 

the poison which would destroy the organism 
unless expelled/' 

You ask, " What shall we do for Willie ? " 

The medical man answers, " I will leave med- 
icine to help nature to do its work, and will tell 
you how to nurse him." 

Then you ask, " Doctor, how long before he 
will get well?" 

And his reply probably will be, " When the 
poison has been entirely overcome and cast 
out." 

Now, the fact is that the saloon is a poison 
center in our body politic. There arises from 
it a deadly malaria which permeates every de- 
partment of our life, and unless it is cast out it 
must finally cause destruction. 

Abraham Lincoln said in his day, " The na- 
tion cannot exist half slave and half free." So 
I say in mine, The Republic cannot live half 
drunk and half sober. The only hope of per- 
manent progress and stability to our institu- 
tions is in casting out this deadly poison that 
is destroying the life of our people. Cast it 
out, not by trying to regulate the stream of 
misery, as one might regulate the flow of 



124 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

water by a faucet ; but stop the cause of it. 
That is the path of wisdom. 

The folly of the license system reminds me 
of Bridget, who had been told by her mistress 
to scrub the kitchen floor. Opening the door 
a while afterwards, she found Bridget with the 
water two or three inches deep, and mopping 
for dear life, while the water still flowed from 
the faucet. 

" Why don't you turn off the faucet, Bridget ?" 
exclaimed the lady. 

" Sure, ma'am, it's mesilf that hasn't toime, 
the water kapes me a-moppin' so fast." 

They tell me that in some insane asylums 
they utilize this same idea to find out whether 
patients that have been improving are suffi- 
ciently sane to be allowed to go home. They 
take them to a close room with a bare floor, 
turn on the faucet, and give them a mop, and 
tell them to mop it dry. If they have sense 
enough to be allowed to go home, they turn 
off the faucet at once. If not, they mop away 
until . taken away to their ward again. When- 
ever the time comes that we are really sane, we 
will turn off the faucet of this infernal traffic. 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT 12$ 

How silly it is for us to go mopping away with 
missions and orphan asylums and Keeley cures 
— and be content with that — when we have it 
within our power to turn off the whole tide of 
drunkenness, disease, and crime by abolishing 
the traffic itself ! 

Oh, but, you say, you must not violate per- 
sonal liberty. How incongruous seems this cry 
of personal liberty from the lips of the saloon- 
keeper ! As another has well said, if liberty 
has fallen so low that her defenders are the 
class of men who debauch the manhood, the 
womanhood, and the civilization of this coun- 
try, God pity liberty ! The idea of these men 
arrogating to themselves the position of special 
champions of the liberties of this people is 
absurd, ridiculous, and nonsensical. It makes 
me think of an illiterate church-member by the 
name of Walker, in Southern Illinois. During 
a revival where his spiritual strength had been 
renewed, the idea came into his mind that he 
ought to preach. He called upon the officers 
of the church, and told them that he believed 
God had given him a special call. They ex- 
pressed some doubts, promised to consider his 



126 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

case, and sent him away. A few days later he 
returned, still more fully impressed that it was 
his divine mission to defend the religion of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and to turn sinners from the 
path of death. The officers of the church asked 
him if he had received any new evidences of his 
call. He responded, " I went home from this 
yer meetin', troubled an' perplexed, an' the nex' 
day I went ter visit neighbor Jones on the hill. 
Comin' back late in the evenin' 'cross the pas- 
ter, the thought come to me that ef God had 
reely called me he oughter make it manifest to 
me thar. So I jest knelt down in a clump of 
bushes, raised up my voice in prayer, and asked 
God to show me my dooty. Jest as I was 
a-prayin', on the stillness broke an awful voice, 
sayin', * Go, Wa-alk-er, W-a-lker, Walker ! Go, 
Pr-e-e-a-cher, Pr-e-a-cher, Pr-e-a-ch-e-r-r-r ! ' 
The officers of the church examined the 
source of the call, and found that it was a 
jackass, which, alarmed at his praying, had 
commenced to bray. For the life of me I 
cannot shake off the idea that this call of the 
liquor dealers as the defenders of liberty must 
have come from some such source. 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT. \2J 

But what is their cry ? They say, " Personal 
liberty ; " they mean, sensual or natural liberty. 
There is a vast difference between civil liberty, 
to insure which the noblest spirits of the 
race have been willing to give life itself, and 
this personal liberty for which the liquor seller 
asks. Unrestrained natural liberty is the en- 
emy of civil liberty. It was personal liberty 
that enabled the assassin Guiteau to shoot 
down President Garfield ; it was civil liberty 
that made him swing from the gallows for that 
act. It is personal liberty that permits the 
saloon-keeper to sell intoxicants that set on fire 
the vicious lusts and wicked passions of his 
victims, and stimulate every form of iniquity 
and crime ; it will be civil liberty, after we have 
national prohibition, that will pour his poison 
into the gutter, and send him, if he persists 
in his abominable business, to the penitentiary. 

One of the most distinguished medical men 
in London relates that one of his friends, a 
gentleman who is a great scholar and antiqua- 
rian, has spent many thousands of pounds in 
collecting the history of London, and pictures 
relating thereto, including exhibitions of Bar- 



128 THE SALOON-KEEPER'S LEDGER. 

tholomew Fair, Tyburn, the Savoy, and those 
horrible old prisons of the cruel, earlier days. 
One night when he was looking through that 
collection, he was horrified by one picture. 
Though accustomed to see death in all forms, 
he turned pale at that picture. It related to 
a debtor's prison. There was a punishment 
which debtors only a little over a hundred years 
ago sometimes underwent. They were put into 
a cell in which a dead body was allowed to lie ; 
and when it could be retained there no longer, 
another was put in its place ! You exclaim in 
horror, " Could such a thing be only a little 
more than a hundred years ago ? " It could 
and did ; and if one hundred years hence some 
man shall stand as we stand now, and refer 
back to the current Brooklyn daily press ac- 
counts of the disease and misery and crime li- 
censed by the liquor saloon, his audience will 
be overcome with incredulity and horror. 

Christian brothers, let us take up this strug- 
gle with renewed courage ! Let us compel po- 
litical parties to fight the saloon or count us 
out ! Let those taunt us who will about " vot- 
ing in the air." It is better a thousand times 



HOW TO SETTLE SALOON ACCOUNT. 1 29 

to "vote in the air" than to deposit your ballot 
in a beer barrel, and help maintain the rule of 
rum. Let us go on " voting in the air" until 
the atmosphere is charged with the electricity 
that presages the thunderbolt of doom to this 
infamous traffic. 

Broderick the Brave, standing undaunted be- 
fore an exultant and despotic slave power, said : 
" Slavery is old and decrepit and dying ; but 
freedom is young and strong and vigorous." 
So the licensed liquor traffic is old and rotten 
with its own corruption. It is a jailbird of in- 
numerable crimes, whose bloated face is familiar 
in every rogues' gallery on the face of the earth. 
Strong and arrogant as it seems, it is really 
staggering to its execution. 

Prohibition is young. The dew of young 
manhood is on its brow. The sunshine of a 
new chivalry streams upon its path. The 
strength of righteousness flows in its veins. 
The courage of immortal hope is in its heart. 
There is but one issue to such a struggle. 
The saloon shall die ! 



GEN. CLINToF B FISK 

PREPARED BY 

PROF. A. A. HOPKINS. 

The life of a man of national repute. His 
remarkable career from boyhood, through 
his business and military life, to his nomi- 
nation for Prohibition President of the 
United States. The biography has been 
brought down to the time of death and 
burial of the General. 12mo, cloth, about 
300 pages. Illustrated with excellent por- 
trait. Price, $1.00, postage free. 



This Biography, prepared (with the General's 
approval) by Prof. Hopkins, who enjoyed free 
access to all the General's private papers, is very 
accurate and complete. It is of permanent and 
standard value to the American people. It is purely 
American in its examples, patriotic in all its teach- 
ings, and will inculcate in the rising generation the 
deepest self-respect, and excite to greater energies 
the noblest ambitions. It is the record of a self- 
made man; the biography of a typical American 
life; a charming story, reaching from the log cabin 
of a pioneer to positions of national honor. 

Our expectations of great things in the detail and 
progress of his life are never disappointed. Nor is 
it surprising to learn of his intimacy with such men 
as Lincoln, Greeley, and Grant; his distinguished 
service in the Civil War, wherein he won his well- 
earned commissions; his endearment to both the 
whites and blacks of the South, and his popularity 
among the mixed multitude of the North, East, and 
West; his splendid business career, and noble 
Christian activities; his championship in many 
patriotic movements ; his eminent social qualities, 
eloquent oratorical abilities, philanthropic spirit, and 
his well-known temperance principles. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, 

30 Lafayette Place, New York. 



Prohibition 



THE PRINCIPLE, 

THE POLICY, AND 




THE PARTY. 

A Dispassionate Study of the Arguments For 
and Against Prohibitory Law, and of the 
Reasons Governing the Political Action of 
Its Advocates. By E. J r Wheeler. Third 
Edition. 12mo, cloth, 227 pp., 75 cents. 
Postage free. 

CONTENTS. 

PART I.— THE PRINCIPLE. 
1. The Legal Phase of the Subject. 2. Two 
Views of the Province of Government. 3. John 
Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. 4. The Ques- 
tion of Personal Liberty. 5. The Sin Per Se. 
6. The Controversy over Bible Wines. 7. 
Physiological Effects of Alcohol. 8. Drink and 
Crime. 9. Drink and Death. 10. The Economi- 
cal Evils of Drink. 11. Political Evils Due 
to the Saloon. 12. The Pleasure of Drink. 13. 
Recapitulation. 

PART II THE POLICY. 

1. The Inquiry Instituted by the Canadian 
Parliament. 2. The Result in Maine. 3. The 
Result in Vermont. 4. The Result in Kansas. 
5. The Result in Iowa. 7. The Attitude of 
the Liquor Dealers. 8. Legal and Moral Results 
of Prohibition. 9. The Demand for National 
Prohibition. 

PART III.— THE PARTY. 
1. Can the Reform be Accomplished Through 
Either Old Party ? 2. The Balance of Power 
Plan. 3. The Non-partisan Plan of Union. 4. 
The Objections to a New Party. 5. Is Public 
Sentiment Ready ? 6. Other Issues of the Day. 

APPENDIX. (over.) 



STRONG THINKERS. 



Chairman Dickie says: "Mr. Wheeler's 
book contains the very bed-rock argument for 
our reform." 

Bishop Fitzgerald writes : " It is the best 
presentation of the subject I have seen." 

Gen. Clinton B. Fisk: "It is by far the 
best thing yet published on Prohibition." 

John Lloyd Thomas writes : " It is a most 
masterly treatment of the fundamentals of our 
reform." 

Judge Briggs : " It is a great book. It is 
the most coherently logical book from begin- 
ning to end that I have ever read." 

H. C. Bascom says : " Condensed, impartial, 
searching, convincing, and scholarly, are adjec- 
tives that can do the book but meagre justice." 

The Voice says: "All the questions in- 
volved are stated with perfect fairness and 
answered with ability — with unsurpassed 
ability we are disposed to say." 

Bishop John H. Hurst writes: "I am 
delighted with it. It covers the whole ground. 
I regard it as the most valuable contribution of 
the day to the growing literature on the 
subject." 

Miss Willard says : "In my judgment we 
have not since the beginning of the controversy 
had a keener Damascus blade than this little 
volume. I believe the person who can read it 
and remain in the old parties is a lusus naturce." 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, 

80 Lafayette Place, New York. 

(see other side.) 



